We've seen (and continue to see) loads of World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King questions up on the WoW Forums, proving just how curious players are about the upcoming expansion. Today's WotLK update is all about world PvP, Lake Wintergrasp, and honor points.

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The first Darkmoon Faire event of the year is set to kick off this weekend (and indeed, has probably already started) in Orlando, Florida. If you're around down there and have any interest in the TCG at all, it's a lot of fun -- they're going to have lots of beginner and advanced tournaments, of course, and an ingame leveling contest on an event server, as well as tips on how to build the best deck and do some card crafting. I went to the Chicago event a little while ago, and I can confirm it's a fun way to spend a weekend afternoon. As always, if you go, take pictures and drop us a note when you get back.

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MMO-Champion has found some new changes in the latest PTR patch. It looks Blizzard has turned their focus away from Shaman and Warlocks for a while in the wake of the recent total rollback of the Life Tap and Flametongue changes, and focused on weaking Restoration Druids some more, perhaps in the wake of the recent revelation that Druids are the most overrepresented class in arenas according to Blizzard's Internal metrics.

We'll look at the specific changes after the break.

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I will freely admit it: I like the CONCEPT of fishing. The Idea of lazing away the day in a rowboat or on a riverbank, pole in hand, chatting with friends and sharing a brew or two is actually pretty appetizing at first glance. I'm all for being lazy. But really, in the end, it's sort of a lot of work, and you have to learn to handle the pole and cast properly and bring the right bait, and then you're actually spending most of your time watching the line for a pull if you want to seriously catch anything, and it's just a whole lot of work.

And that's just real life fishing. World of Warcraft fishing seems to follow the same basic concepts. As an avid roleplayer, I try to play my characters as close to type as possible and keep up their skills to match. I have a hunter in particular who is a classic backwoods rough and tumble hunter type, and it really seems like she should be a pretty good angler, so it's sort of bothered me that I can't get into WoW fishing.

Luckily, with the new fishing daily quests being introduced in 2.4, I think I've finally been prodded into action as far as levelling fishing goes. After all, who can resist some of these rewards? You can get an awesome hat, or a pretty cute baby crocolisk, or a recipe for booze. Oh yeah, and that one... er, two ring.

But the question becomes, how to get over the boredom and get to fishing? I'll share some of my own methods after the break.

1. Get Fishping. It will replace the default, barely-audible fishing bite sound with a loud ping you're sure to hear. You'll need to have in-game sound on, though, and it's installed in a special way that is not quite the same as other addons, so make sure you read the instructions. This one won't directly relieve your boredom, but it will allow you to, say, look away from the screen for a few seconds without losing your cast, and enable a lot of the time wasters below.

2. Load up your RSS reader or your favorite website. If your computer can handle a few quick alt-tabs, your new louder ping sound should allow you to hear and tab back while you check your favorite blogs, forums, or webcomics. Make sure you allow sound when WoW in is the background under the sound options in game so the sound comes through.

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While we reported a while back on the use of the Essence of the Immortals as a method to unlock the Sunwell Plateau 25-man, progressive patching has continued its march, as Tigole explains to us in a recent forum thread.

The Essence of the Immortals itself is now gone, and instead, all gates will open automatically over time on each server. Tigole explains that although they like the idea of cross-server competition, and plan to implement in the future, The Essence of the Immortals concept wasn't working out as well as they'd hoped. Of course, servers can still compete to unlock the daily quests the fastest.

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A new build is being deployed on test servers, changes will be reported here as we discover them.

PTR Patch notes update
Patch note on the official site have been updated once again ! The patch also includes the changes from the latest PTR Notes update.
Quote from Blizzard staffGeneral

• Non-self % based haste spells will no longer stack with each other.

Druid

• Lifebloom: The bonus coefficient on the final bloom effect has been reduced by 20%. This spell will no longer cause error messages when interacting with Spellsteal or while the Druid is under the effects of Mind Control.
• Regrowth: The mana cost of this spell has been reduced by approximately 20%.

Hunter

• Improved Mend Pet now has a 25/50 (was 50/100) chance to remove one Curse, Disease, Magic, or Poison effect, up from 15/50%.

Paladin

• Illumination: The mana energize from this talent no longer has a chance to set off other triggered effects.

Other classes
Make sure you check the previous PTR Notes update

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A new build is being deployed on PTRs and TTR, as usual changes will be up as soon as possible.

PTR notes update

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Is this you? (image from Real Life Comics.)

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Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

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We haven't done a lot of PvP gear here (any, I think) on Phat Loot, but I figured this phat wand might be a good place to start.

Name: Vengeful Gladiator's Touch of Defeat (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWWiki)
Type: Epic Wand
Damage/Speed: 252-468 Fire / 1.90 (189.5 DPS)
Abilities:

• +18 Stamina, +14 Intellect
• Improves your resilience rating by 14, which is standard for PvP arena gear -- anything to counteract those big crits.
• Increases damage and healing by magical spells and effects by up to 18. Which doesn't seem like a lot, but for a wand, it's pretty good.
• The big difference between this and the other PvP season 3 wand, the Piercing Touch, is that this one doesn't have spell penetration on it. The tradeoff is the Intellect, and a few damage points, so it's up to you. Higher end players might go for the penetration (that's the only way you can get past resistances), while a player who is in the Arenas only in between raids might grab this one. It's up to you.

How to Get It: Like we've said, you need to play Arena PvP to grab this one. It's available from the Arena vendors for 1000 points, which doesn't require too long to get, as long as you're a good and steady player. Holding onto a 1500 rating in a 5v5 team will get you a little over 300 points a week, which means it'll take 3-4 weeks to gain this many points (and of course you've got to play 10 games a week and make sure you're playing a good percentage of the team's total battles).

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Ever since Tom Chilton (Kalgan), World of Warcraft's lead game designer, hinted that they were looking into providing Warlocks with teleportation, quite a number of players have been up in arms. The biggest complaints have come from the Mages since they've been encountering a lot of problems when they go up against Warlocks.

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Fear not, brave raiders who have been stuck on Kael and Vashj! In 2.4, you'll be able to walk into Black Temple and Mount Hyjal without having to kill the pain-in-the-tuchus prerequisite bosses to get attuned. To assist you in exploring these untamed lands, Gragnarth of <Simple Math> on Andorhal has created a quick guide to all the BT/Hyjal bosses. Corrected-for-spelling highlights include:

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Last week, we rounded up all of the professions-related changes coming with patch 2.4 for various reagents, mining, blacksmithing, engineering and fishing. If you were feeling left out, have no fear; the rest of the professions are here! From new enchants and gems, to new recipes and craftable gear, every profession is getting a bit of a boost this patch.

Once again, keep in mind that because this is information from the Public Test Realms, the specifics may be changed. If you see a Wowhead tooltip, and I have provided alternate materials next to it, that is because websites like MMO-Champion have since discovered updated information.

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Game Developer magazine has done a study naming the top 50 videogame developers in the world, based on "sales and reputation data," and our favorite folks at Blizzard have been named number three on the list, just under Nintendo Kyoto (responsible for Brain Age and Wii Play) and Infinity Ward (most notable lately for Call of Duty 4), and ahead of EA, Valve, Harmonix, and Square Enix.

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If I only have time to do one daily quest, I do the one for the battlegrounds. If I only have time to do two daily quests, I do the battleground quest, Escape from Skettis, and Fires of Skettis. Yes, that's three quests, but the Skettis quests have been a source of quick and easy cash. I really consider them to be two steps to the same quest. Blizzard seems to be trying to make those quests less appealing in patch 2.4.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is the column for warriors. And apparently this week at least one warrior, ol Matthew Rossi, has a burr up his saddle and is going to rant about it. We try and let him have these little episodes from time to time so that when we point him at Tidewalker's crotch he obligingly whacks it with a sword.

It's interesting playing a warrior in these times. When people aren't demanding we tank their PuG for them, they're demanding we be nerfed in PvP because we dominate it. Except we don't. According to Blizzard's internal numbers, Warriors are under-represented in every single bracket except 2x2, and then only in ratings about 2200. In other words, there are less warriors in every single bracket of Arena play than one would expect by the number of warrior players save for the higest ranked level of the 2x2 arena game. In every single other possible arena combination at either 2200 or 1850 rating, warriors are far from dominant.

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A couple of the new Alchemist Stones in Patch 2.4 have had their stats changed in the past few days. I assume this change was made to make them more friendly to a wider variety of classes and specs, but you can never say for sure!

The Assassin's Alchemist Stone originally came packing +54 Critical Strike Rating, but now carries +108 Attack Power instead. The caster version, the Sorcerer's Alchemist Stone, has shifted over to +63 Damage/Healing from its original +54 Spell Hit Rating.

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Here's another update to World of Warcraft's Public Test Realms. Yeah, they just keep on coming, but that's the good thing about the PTRs isn't it? You get to try out the latest updates before anyone else.

This batch of updates has several new changes for Alchemist Stones, item and class changes, and a new recipe for Jewelcrafting called Brilliant Glass. You can also find the download for the update by following the link at the end of the article. Watch out, it's worth a whopping 84 MB. Here are the updates:

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Warlocks across the realms of Azeroth and the Outlands had something to celebrate about when they found out that one of their favorite spells has been reverted back to its original state since its unprecedented nerf during a previous PTR build for World of Warcraft.

The Life Tap ability will once again return to its previous one-is-to-one ratio of health-to-mana conversion. This replaces the nerf given to it when the spell only converted a fixed percentage of mana according the level of the skill.

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Recently, World of Warcraft lead game designer Tom Chilton (Kalgan) dropped by the MMORPG's official forums to share some thoughts on the reverted Warlock nerf and new skills the developers are thinking about giving the class.

A number of players have suggested that Chilton wouldn't be as enthusiastic about giving Warlocks new skills to play with because of all the "whining" they've been doing recently. Well, we're pleased to report that this is not the case. Here's what Chilton had to say about the whole thing:

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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 progressive patch is a roller coaster ride; is Blizzard toying with our emotions? I can imagine the folks at Irvine playing WoW as a grand social experiment: "Let's put in this class-changing nerf and see how they respond, muahahahaha!" The Warlock community certainly responded, and the mood is somewhat settled, now that the Life Tap change has been rolled back and Kalgan has confirmed that "No other Warlock nerfs are planned for 2.4."

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Dipex from Goon Squad contacts us to report on the guild's having brought Jaina and Thrall together for a -- uh -- tempestuous reunion in Orgrimmar. The video above can be seen in a higher quality version here, and it's quite a sight. On occasion I've entertained thoughts of the stunts I'd pull as a GM in WoW, and high on that list would be pitting raid or faction bosses against each other for an ingame version of Two Bosses Enter. Well, Goon Squad actually pulled it off. I won't spoil the video for you, but apparently Thrall and Cairne aren't immune to Jaina's teleportation ability...

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With over nine million views on YouTube, Where The Hell Is Matt? has inspired people all over the world. mrgizmo created his own version of the video within World of Warcraft, showcasing hard to reach areas. While not the best filmed or edited, it's still an interesting way to highlight the numerous beautiful locations that WoW has to offer! What is your favorite machinima that was inspired by real life?

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Welcome to today's edition of Ask WoW Insider, in which we publish your questions for dissection by the peanut gallery -- now with extra snark and commentary by one of our writers. This week, reader CS writes:

A number of months ago the old guild I had been in for nearly 2 years broke up due to varies reasons so I found a new raiding guild.
They are decent raiders, not the top raiding guild but a strong one still and our raid leader is good but I find myself on standby alot still.
If the reason is because of my lack of experience with high end raiding or something else ok but how can I fix the problem if they wont tell me that there is a problem?

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Player Zerotes of Earthen Ring realm had this to say about the screenshot he sent in:

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When Vivendi acquired Activision -- or was it Activision acquiring Vivendi? these business deals confuse me -- to form what the soon-to-be Activision-Blizzard late last year, many players were concerned about how this would affect our beloved MMO. Blizzard assured its players with an FAQ on the forums about the merger stating, in no uncertain terms, that it would not affect Blizzard's games in any way (except to improve them, presumably). Activision CEO Bobby Kotick recently spoke with Next Generation, however, and talked very much like the businessman, discussing possible revenue models for their stable of games. He mentions how Activision-Blizzard must figure out StarCraft's business model for the future, "with in-game advertising and sponsorship" which he says "presents a tremendous opportunity for the future."

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Lately, the forums have been full of people accusing other players of being bad at World of Warcraft. The denizens of the Raids and Dungeons forums have even gone so far as to call casual players "bads", and complain about "terribles" or "scrub guilds" getting into raids without attunements. This brings up an interesting point: what makes someone "bad at WoW"?

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It seems that floating cities are all the rage these days in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Last time, Around Azeroth featured the Stormwind version of Undercity. This time around, it's Silvermoon City that gets the floating love.

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Twin Eredars loot table final update
The Twin Eredars have been killed a decent amount of time now, and we can assume that we heard about all the items dropping from them by now, the latest additions are the 3 Shoulders drop (That's 6 new items because they're all exchangeable). They're not new items, just an addition to the loot table to make it complete. Reminder : Items tagged with a (*) in the list are available from the vendor on the Sunwell Isle if you can provide the loot above it on the list along with a Sunmote.

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Having trouble trying to log into World of Warcraft recently? If you are, you may want to listen in on a recent update that was posted over at the WoW forums by Drysc.

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M'uru encounter preview

Yesterday all bosses but the fifth one and Kil'jaeden have been disabled on purpose by Blizzard to gather feedback on the M'uru encounter.

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When Blizzard asked World of Warcraft players to check the Fan Art page every so often for frequent updates, the company wasn't kidding. The page is being updated at a steady pace, and now Blizzard representative Vaneras has featured new fanart from WoW player and artist, Yan Dumas.

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World of Warcraft Warlock players are currently discussing over at the official forums about the improved Life Tap ability. For those not so familiar with it, it basically allows players to convert life into mana.

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More class changes afoot! Tipster Aikiwoce sends along a blue post in which Kalgan reassures mages that they haven't been forgotten in upcoming talent and ability changes in WotLK. The thread, which seems to have been started mostly because of the earlier warlock thread he'd responded on, elicited a short but highly revealing response from Kalgan: "Mages will get new abilities in the expansion too, believe it or not. In fact, we intend to tone down how strong of a counter Warlocks are to Mages through the WotLK spells/talents."

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