Paris is the place to be this June for Blizzard fans. The sights, the sounds... the aliens and orcs? Well that's what you get during Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational event. Tickets are soon going to be available in a mere three days, on March 20.

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Quite a number of players can't wait for Blizzard to release Patch 2.4 for World of Warcraft. Why wouldn't they, considering all the classes will be getting a number of buffs. Community Manager Eyonix said that the patch will be coming soon at least when compared to the arrival of Season 4.

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Zv of Destromath has an interesting argument on the forums -- he says that Blizzard has overextended themselves, and that by producing everything from trading cards to credit cards to WoW minis, the board game, and the upcoming movie (and he even forgot the FigurePrints and Dell deals), they've lost sight of what they should be working on: the game itself. While Zv does admit on the second page what Bornakk points out on the first (that it's not the same people or even the same company working on all of this stuff, and that the devs are still working on designing the game, not writing a script for the movie), there is still the same old argument here when anything goes mainstream and starts selling a brand: has the original material been neglected?

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If you're a fan of fan art and haven't seen Wyndforge's work yet, it's definitely a must-see. He basically creates digital art direct from screenshots, and by combining poses (along with a few extra sparkles), he turns out some pretty amazing stuff. And while he does sell custom orders if you want a shot of your own character, Wynd gets bonus points for opening up all his other work as wallpaper-sized versions in the galleries. He doesn't list prices on the site, so we're not sure how much it costs to make one of these, but even if its pricy, it's fun just browsing through the galleries.

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Players have different opinions regarding what character classes are good PvP choices in Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft. One such class that players have complained about is the shadow spec'ed priest. 

Quite a number of players have complained that the spec is rather underpowered and not a good choice for serious players. You know what, they might be right.

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It seems to come up quite often. Someone wants the language barrier bought down. Even if it requires questing or skilling up, they want to be able to talk to the other faction. It would even make lore sense, since at the least, Undead and Blood Elves should probably know common, and Thalassian is probably close enough to Darnassian that someone who knows one language should probably be able to get the gist of the other. That said, Blizzard's held pretty fast to the principle of squelching cross-factional communication. The only way you can make yourself known to the other side is with the default emotes, or sometimes with a bit of creative typing that can only convey crude messages.

Honestly, at one point I was pretty gung-ho on removing the language barrier. As an RPer, a big part of the fun for me is being able to talk, act out scenes, say stuff in character, and all that. It was sort of annoying sometimes that I could be in an epic struggle with, say, a guild of Undead assassins, but any actual communication we made, be it OOC arranging of the storyline and in-game events or IC trash talk, would have to all be on message boards and email. It loses some of the spontaneity of in-game interaction. That said, lately I think I've decided that I'm fine with the current of level of cross-faction communication. Talking to the other side would cause more trouble than it would be worth.

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Knightless is having the same problem I'd guess quite a few players have -- her interest in her character is flagging a bit, and she's trying to figure out a way to get more involved in what she's doing in Azeroth. This is an interesting situation, because at this point, with almost any other game, the player would just leave and go find something else to play (and actually, I can say from experience that sometimes taking a short break from the game completely can rebuild your interest in it), but things don't really work that way in World of Warcraft -- responsibilities to your guild and the people you've met in game will keep you around even when your interest is low.

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Recently we've had several posts about being hacked, guild banks assaulted, and Blizzard's typical response. The Customer Service Forum is filled with threads started by desperate World of Warcraft players seeking the return of their accounts and belongings as a gesture of goodwill. It is our responsibility to keep our accounts safe from hackers.

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So as you may remember, the majority of our readers expected patch 2.4 to fall on March 18th, which, being that today is St. Patrick's Day, is tomorrow. Also, this weekend, the PTR got taken down (although Blizzard claimed it was because more testing was happening on the tournament test realm -- the TTR -- and not because the patch was ready for prime time). And, oh yeah, the patch has already started downloading in the Background Downloader.

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As you may recall, a few days ago, I wrote a little Dear Blizzard letter on the subject of enforcing the RP and Naming Policy. Of course, Once one writes a letter to someone, it is a good idea to deliver it, and thus I delivered it, or at least the issues therein, over on the Customer Service Forum. I was lucky enough to have Belfaire, who you may remember from his post explaining Blizzard's stance on multi-boxing, answer some of my questions and concerns. I also got some pretty well thought out feedback from a couple other people browsing the forums, including some roleplayers who disagreed with some of my points, so I think the threads worth a read in itself, and I'll comment a bit more on what Belfaire said after the break, now that I've had time to digest it a bit.

First things first, he actually offers some pretty handy tips for reporting. If you have a big batch of names or RP server policy violations to report (the latter hopefully appended with the time it occurred), you can send them to wowgm@blizzard.com, and they will be treated exactly like a report made in-game. In addition, he does confirm what some of our commenters on my last post said: if you could stand to skip the tells, you can simply say in the ticket that you don't wish to be contacted, and unless they need more information from you, they will skip the tell. Also, Belfaire assured me that even if you ask them to skip the tells, they will still take it just as seriously as any other ticket.

Moving on, he did try to explain how Blizzard approaches the issues of policing names and the RP policy. I didn't always agree with him, of course, but I certainly appreciated that he was up front and clear. I also appreciated that he showed a sympathy for the plight of the RPer that I'd like to see Blizzard show more often.

On the subject of changing names over multiple servers, he said that it was, in fact a question of workload. With over 200 realms in the US alone, he says, tracking down each individual name would be far too much of a pain, and actioning so many names would be too much of a strain. In addition, he says, by waiting for a member of the specific server community to report a name, it allows that community to decide what's acceptable.

On the subject of RP server policy violations, Belfaire said that it's a much more subjective process (Which any veteran reporter of RP server policy violations can most definitely tell you), but he also said that he feels that they do take reports of RP violations very seriously.

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Ever since Blizzard's World of Warcraft went live there has always been confusion over what role a Druid plays in the game. This is not surprising considering the different roles the class can fill.

World of Warcraft Europe Community Manager Tharfor commented on this and identified three roles (based on spec) that the class normally fills.

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Sometimes, real life can catch up to your guild leader. It's a big job that definitely cuts into time that may be spent doing other things, especially if he or she has a family. When your leader resigns from the position, how does your guild fill that void of power? This week's e-mail comes from someone who wants to step up and assume leadership.

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Jethro and Lump are an unlikely duo. Jethro isn't the brightest redneck in Azeroth, and Lump forgot his ADD medication. However, together they find themselves searching for the epic tankadin blade. In Fresh Oyster Episode 1, they are sent a mysterious ticking package that begins their adventure.

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PTRs taken down: TTR online for testing

Blizzard has taken down the PTRs to gather information about the Tournament Test Realm, and according to additional blue posts the PTRs might not come back online. (src)

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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 Jane writes in:

Hi there, WoWinsider. Perhaps you guys could help me. I started playing WoW about 6 months ago While I've done my share of TBC raiding, I'm fascinating with pre-TBC raids, and sometimes I manage to find a pug for them. I still didn't get to see most of MC, BWL and Naxx, even though I really want to.

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Though St. Patrick's Day isn't officially celebrated in Azeroth (Brewfest being the closest thing in October), players have to make do with their own in-game celebrations. Warlock Faust decided to get his holiday on early by climbing to the top of an Inn to get this screenshot. Not the craziest thing that's going to happen this day, I'm sure.

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2.4 PTRs down until further notice
PTRs have been taken down to increase the amount of people testing the TTRs. That's a pretty good news actually because it looks like they need to rush a few tests ... maybe because the patch is going live soon ?
Quote from: Hortus (Source)In order to gather additional logging information for the Tournament Test realm we will be taking down the regular 2.4 PTRs until further notice. We encourage everyone to check out the TTR to help us test our new hardware configurations.

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Today is St. Patrick's Day, and I'm sure my Irish Catholic grandmother will be proud of me when I show her this Easter holiday that I've managed to write something up on this Irish celebration. In fact, pictured above is my Irish leaning main character Osullivan overlooking the green river in Chicago. My friends in Defenders of The Pass over on the Eldre'Thalas server have teased me for years with green beer, and today, I'm going to have one and salute them all. /cheers!

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If you happen to be a resident of World of Warcraft's Public Test Realms, we've got some bad news. Blizzard Community Manager Hortus passed by the WoW Forums earlier to announce that the devs have decided to shut down the PTRs (currently on patch 2.4) until further notice.

Hortus explained that this was done so that they could focus on testing their new hardware configurations for the Tournament Test realm (TTR). In line with this news, Hortus is also  encouraging players to check out the TTR.

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Were you one of those people who missed out on Blizzcon last year because the tickets were sold out? We hope you learned your lesson if you're planning to go to this year's Blizzard Entertainment Worldwide Invitational. Blizzard poster Tharfor gave WoW Europe Forum members a heads up: Tickets for the Worldwide Invitational will be available next week.

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