There's no denying that patch 2.4 has been one hot topic today. Not just here on WoW Insider, either. I'd say it's safe to assume Google is a pretty good indicator of what's what on the internet, and Google Trends reveals all.

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According to numerous reports and several personal experiences, much of the Burning Crusade content is offline on several servers, both in the U.S. and the E.U.. When attempting to access a character in any of these locations you will be presented with an error that says "World Server Down."

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Blizzard has changed around the way patch files are stored on Windows Vista. They are no longer stored under the C:\Program Files\World of Warcraft\Patches directory. They are now stored under the C:\Users\Public\Documents\Blizzard Entertainment\World of Warcraft directory. This change is due to the way that Window Vista and Microsoft wants programs to store internal documents and settings, which is technically what a patch is.

This might be confusing to some people expecting to go in and make a mirror of the patch for guildies and friends, or copying the files over to multiple computers to cut down on the update time.

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Tonight many people are going to rush into raiding. It's going to be a fun time for many – perhaps you're going to explore the Sunwell Plateau for the first time, or perhaps you'll no longer be stuck at 5/6 and 3/4. Rage Winterchill awaits you and he's a big push over. He goes boom pretty easily.

The common component amongst all of us raiders, whether we're in Kara or pushing onto Sunwell, is that we need addons to make our life easier. There are several necessary ones: Deadly Boss Mods, Omen, ora2, Recount, DrDamage, etc... If you don't have these tonight, things can get markedly more complicated and difficult. The big problem with getting these addons is that they can be dreadfully hard to get a hold of. Most sites are bogged down to the point they're not working.

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...who has patch 2.4 for you all?

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So, by now I'm sure many of you have made your way to the Sunwell and started figuring out the daily quests. You've probably checked out our walkthroughs of the new dailies for Shattrath and the 1st phase of the offensive, and gotten your bearings pretty well. Still, there's a lot of quests to deal with, and it can understandably get a bit boggling sorting through them all.

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Heads up, World of Warcraft gamers! Patch 2.4 is has finally gone live on the US and European servers. This has been confirmed by Blizzard posters Belfaire of the European forums and Bornakk on the US forums. And everyone else who's grabbed the updates.

Testing on the PTRs concluded earlier today. You can download Patch 2.4 via the autoupdater.  Patch 2.4 will feature the Sunwell instances and a lot of other updates you can check out by following this link.

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There are times when a heated argument on the World of Warcraft forums begins from a simple discussion of whether or not a new bug is actually an intended in-game feature or an actual glitch in the system. This was certainly the case in a recent thread started by poster Nurgle regarding the recursion of the mid-cast target switching bug.

This was confirmed by several others on the forums and was noted to have been occurring on both the 2.4 PTR and the live version of WoW. It soon became a point of contention whether this was an intended game balance feature or an actual bug tied into the game. There were even reports of this issue going as far back as the 2.3 PTR.

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The realms are starting to trickle online now. Eldre'Thalas is up, and I'm sitting online enjoying a long ride up to Ghostlands to get to the Sunwell Plateau. You'll find a long list of other realms online if you log into the game now. Hopefully one of them will be yours. But if not, don't worry. Blizzard has said they'll be finishing things up by 12:30 p.m. PDT, and it looks like they're set to make that target.

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I'm back! RL got the best of me just after writing my first post here for my favorite WoW site. There is no better time to return than on a new patch that finally releases a new 25-man raid dungeon. It's been just over 10 months since Blizzard released the last 25-man instance, The Black Temple. Like patch 2.1, patch 2.4 promises to be a major content patch that should keep us busy raiding for the foreseeable future, at least hopefully until WotLK.

"But my guild is no where near Sunwell. Who cares about another raid instance that I will never step foot into?" Unlike patch 2.1, which had a complicated attunement process for The Black Temple, this patch removes all attunement requirements for all TBC raid instances. This change, along with many other changes included in patch 2.4 transforms the current raiding landscape giving the raider more paths to take. Whether you're a guild doing SSC/TK or (un)patiently waiting for Sunwell for the past six months, this patch affects you in some way. Find out how these new changes will affect your raiding experience.

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Man, with all the patch 2.4 news flying around today, you might feel a little overwhelmed. Well, worry no more, because just when you need something a little silly and lighthearted, the WoW Insider Show comes right along, with Episode 30 now available on WoW Radio and iTunes. This past Saturday, Turpster and I, along with Amanda Dean and Elizabeth Wachowski of WoW Insider, had a sit down to talk about all of the biggest news in the past week of Warcraft, including, but not limited to:

• Our favorite trinkets (mine I picked only because the tooltip uses the word "fecundity")
• What "counts" in terms of leveling as fast as possible
• Elizabeth talked to us for a bit about the lore of the Burning Crusade, and both the high and low points of it
• We chatted about the best starting areas in the game (there was a strange split over the Dwarf/Gnome area for some reason as well)
• And finally we hit on Amanda's Azerothian General Election, which you can still vote on right now -- Thrall is still winning, so Alliance, you better grab your sword and fight the Horde.


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I'd like to interrupt your patch 2.4 coverage for this important announcement. This Saturday, 29 March is your first opportunity to get an early look at the Servants of the Betrayer expansion to the World of Warcraft Trading Card Game. Upper Deck welcomes players of all skill levels.

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Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, postpones the final part of the bear tanking strategy guide once again to focus on druid changes in today's patch 2.4.

Yeah, yeah, I know. Leveling guides still need to be written, tanking strategy article gets put off yet another week.

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We heard from a few people either new or returning to WoW that the amount of information overload on our front page was reaching critical mass, so it occurred to us that it might not be obvious why the fabled Patch Day is such a ("Dogs and cats living together! Mass hysteria! Details at 10!") big deal in these here parts. Here's an older WoW Rookie on "What is a patch?" from Amanda Dean if you're new to the business of how Blizzard updates its content.

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A fresh popup from the in-game breaking news section tells us that the extended maintenance has been extended until 12:30 p.m. PDT. They are hard at work getting patch 2.4 ready.

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In its gestational stages, Patch 2.4 threatened to be a PvP landscape-changing patch with the controversial change to Life Tap and ill-advised buff to Flametongue. Those proposed changes won't make it live, however, and it looks like World of Warcraft PvP won't be drastically different than it was pre-patch. But there are several key changes that affect PvP, some classes more than others. Because there are no major significant changes to class mechanics or abilities, I don't expect the environment to change. But the best thing about PvP is that it's all about the little things, and Patch 2.4 brings a lot of little things into play.

Class changes
Most classes received changes that many felt were aimed towards balancing Arena play. Classes that were perceived to be over-represented in Arenas, such as Druids, received some nerfs while under-represented classes such as Shamans, received some buffs. Warlocks were initially thought to be on an upswing trend, prompting Blizzard to whip up the nerf bat. Fortunately, Blizzard noticed that the trend plateaued and eventually held off on the move. Despite the lack of radical changes, Patch 2.4 affects the PvP environment in a lot of ways, more for some classes than others.

Druids
Druids received a number of arguable nerfs this patch, perhaps owing to their extremely high representation in Arenas. Perhaps the most significant change to Druids was the nerf to the range of Cyclone, an ability I consider to be the most powerful CC in the game. This won't be too palpable in other areas of PvP but may have an impact in the smaller, controlled spaces of Arenas. Bringing the range down to 20 yards makes Druids casting Cyclone susceptible to more interrupt mechanics such as Earth Shock, Silence, or even Repentance.

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With the game updated to patch 2.4, and the servers "scheduled" (I use the term loosely) to come online in 15 minutes, I'm presented with a nice little server selection box when I log in. Complete with a new location (Blizzard's catogorization, not mine) to choose: "Development."

What is this?

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If you're like me, you'll be running the brand-new 5-man dungeon of 2.4, Magister's Terrace, as soon as you can. How can you not love a 5-man with four bosses borrowing elements from 25-man raids, a cutscene, and a guaranteed epic even on normal? If you're looking for more information on what to expect, here's a round-up of WoW Insider's coverage to date and our Magister's Terrace gallery.

Follow the cut for a host of helpful articles on bosses, drops, videos, and scenery!

• Videos of boss fights in the dungeon: the first shows Kael on normal, and the second has Selin Fireheart, Vexallus, video of the Sunwell cutscene, and then another Kael kill (sadly no Priestess Delrissa, although she's an add fight along the lines of Moroes).


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So, 2.4 is live, (some of) the servers are up -- did you really expect things to go smoothly? -- and you're raring to head to the Isle of Quel'danas and start kicking some legion behind in the name of justice and awesome badge loot. But before you go, just remember that you can't do it all on the first day. That's not only because you have to take a break from WoW sometime, but because there's a few things that will only be unlocked for your enjoyment with time and/or completed dailies.

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Of the many shiny goodies coming our way with Patch 2.4, some of the shiniest are the new mounts and non-combat pets. The 5-man Kael'Thas of Magister's Terrace drops the latest status symbol among pet collector's: the Phoenix Hatchling. We're not sure of the drop rate, but we have to assume it's going to be rare. If you can't get it in-game, you can always check it out on video.

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Heads up, World of Warcraft gamers! Patch 2.4 is (finally) going live today on the US and European servers. This has been confirmed by Blizzard posters Belfaire of the European forums and Bornakk on the US forums.

Testing on the PTRs concluded earlier today. Patch 2.4 will feature the Sunwell instances and a lot of other updates you can check out by following this link. While you wait for your update to finish, here's a new trailer for Patch 2.4, Fury of the Sunwell, enjoy!

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The patch is coming.

We all know this. We don't know exactly when it will be here, but will know it's coming. (Edited to add - okay, it's today.) What will it change? What will warriors have to be concerned about, what will we look forward to, and what gear can we get from the unlockable vendor on the Sunwell island?

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When information began to trickle down about patch 2.4, hunters, like most classes, were groaning. Which nerf bat would we be hit with next? Fortunately, it seems that we have slipped under the radar. For now. Maybe Aspect of the Beast finally did us some good.

Let's break down the changes and see how this is going to be affecting us. With no major patches between now and Wrath, we might be living with these changes for awhile.

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Surprised to see us again so soon? Well, with 2.4 hitting today (Elune willing), it's time to see what there is out there for rogues in the new patch -- at least gear-wise, since rogues don't have many mechanic changes on the PTR right now. This new gear is available as badge rewards, drops from Magister's Terrace, and even crafted loot! (Sorry -- since the Sunwell isn't going to be open at first, loot from the 25-man raid has been left out of this one, and we talked about the Shattered Sun rep rewards already.)

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I chose some lighter fare for today while you get your patch 2.4 fix on. Garritt Windspire, of Windspire Entertainment, made the cutest music video in World of Warcraft. Being a short one myself (but not that short!), I find gnomes absolutely adorable. Baby It's Cold Outside is no Baron Soosdon production, but for what it is, it works well.

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The long-awaited patch 2.4 is finally here, and if you're a crafting nut, you'll find yourself asking, "what do I do first?". Luckily, WoW Insider has you covered.

If you are a leatherworker, Insider Trader has not only put together a guide to maximizing your skill, but has ensured that it is up-to-date with the changes coming in patch 2.4.

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With patch 2.4 live, lets take a look at what it's offering those of the more Priestly persuasion. Gear, a few talent and spell changes, and some new fun in the new instances will be a boon for your Priest.

For our Shadow brothers, you can now look forward to Fear Ward in Shadowform and a somewhat nerfed Vamperic Touch (they've fixed the bug where casting lower ranks wasn't penalized like other healing spells are).

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Back in February I made this post on Totem Talk discussing the patch 2.4 changes for shamans. Since then, things have changed and the current changes to the class are as follows.

• Call of Thunder: (Rank 5) now gives 5% critical strike chance.
• Chain Lightning: This ability will no longer jump to secondary targets which are under the effect of crowd-control spells that break on taking damage. i.e. Polymorph, Sap, etc.
• Earth Shield: Mana cost reduced roughly in half, and charges reduced from 10 to 6.
• Elemental Focus: This buff will no longer be removed when Shamanistic Focus is triggered.
• Flametongue Weapon: Having different ranks of this enchantment cast on two different weapons will no longer cause the enchantments to trigger multiple times per swing.
• Ghost Wolf: Cast time reduced to 2 seconds, down from 3.
• The Global Cooldown of all Totems has been reduced to 1 seconds, down from 1.5 seconds.
• Healing Grace: This talent now reduces the chance your spells will be dispelled by 10/20/30%.The resistance to being dispelled modifier from this talent now applies correctly to Water Breathing.
• Rockbiter Weapon: Tooltip and error messages have been adjusted slightly.
• Shamanistic Rage is now a Physical ability instead of a Magic spell, and thus is no longer dispellable. It now reduces all damage taken by 30% and gives your successful melee attacks a chance to regenerate mana equal to 30% of your attack power. This lasts for 15 seconds with a 2 minute cooldown.
• Stormstrike has a new icon.
• Totem timer icons will now show up under your player portrait when you cast totem spells. Right-clicking a totem timer icon will destroy that totem.
• Toughness will now also reduce the duration of movement slowing effects on you by 10/20/30/40/50%.
• Tremor Totem now pulses every 3 seconds, down from 4 seconds.
• The Shaman spell Fire Nova Totem will no longer sometimes detonate without doing any damage.

That's a pretty substantial list of changes all told. Some are clearly bug fixes, while others are straightforward buffs (the totem cooldown being reduced to 1 second, Shamanistic Rage no longer dispellable, totem timers) and others have the horrible taint of nerf upon them (Call of Thunder giving 1% less crit). Still others aren't so cut and dried. So let's take a look at what this patch means for us shamans.

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Now that the patch is upon us, it's a good time for reflecting upon all the new badge rewards available to us in the near future. As a hybrid class with 3 main viable specs (healing, tanking, DPS), it's no wonder that there's a lot of new badge gear for paladins in this patch. Allison did a fantastic write-up of new badge gear for druids a few days back, so I figured I'd follow her format as it relates to paladins!

Holy

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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.

I don't know about you, but the first thing I'm going to do when patch 2.4 goes live will be to spend my hard-earned badges on some new shiny loot. I've been wearing my Frozen Shadoweave Robe since forever (no luck with Magtheridon for my T4 - *cry*), and frozen or not, the dress is smelling a little ... musty.

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It seems like an odd mix, but all three of these categories, Casuals, Warlocks and Mages haven't had much change since our initial write ups. Sure Warlocks went through the whole life tap nerf roller coaster ride, but that worked out in the end, eh?

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So 2.4's going live, and I know your first question: What's in it for me? If you're a Hunter, let me enlighten you, at least on the subject of badge loot. There's a couple pieces of mail armor and a few new weapons that Hunters should have their eye on once Smith Hauthaa is open for business, and I'll give you the breakdown on how they stack up for Hunters after the Break. Just to note, I will mostly be comparing these to T5 and T6 drops, and will assume that you won't be attacking the Sunwell immediately.

Weapons

Crossbow of Relentless Strikes - Now this baby is a real beauty. Although it's still a bit less DPS than the Black Bow of the Betrayer, It's going to end up being better overall for Beastmastery Hunters in some cases thanks to the lower speed. As a Beastmastery Hunter, you're probably going to want to be shooting for a 1:1 shot rotation (That is, 1 Auto Shot, 1 Steady Shot), and getting to the approximately 1.7 second ranged attack speed sweet spot is going to be a lot easier to do with this crossbow's 2.8 base speed. If you have a whole lot of haste gear or really need the mana regeneration on the Black Bow of the Betrayer, it may still be worth shooting for that instead, but if you need to shave a bit more time off your ranged attack speed, or if you don't have a chance of seeing Illidan go down any time soon, this is the ranged weapon for you (If you're unsure about how to calculate your total ranged attack speed, see Big Red Kitty's guide here).

The downside to this is that if you're a Marksman or a Survivalist, you may find that the crossbow's speed makes it harder to fit in a more complicated rotation. If you already have the Black Bow of the Betrayer, you're better off sticking with it for sure. If you don't, this is really when you have to check your rotation, check Cheeky's Spreadsheet, and see if any extra DPS from the crossbow is worth the possible shot clipping (when one of your special shots interrupts or skips an Auto Shot). Bottom line: If you are a Beastmastery Hunter, this is probably the first 150 badges you should spend once Hauthaa is unlocked on your server. If you're not, it may still be worth it, but check your ranged attack speed.

The Blade of the Harbingers - This isn't a bad axe, but the big question, of course, is whether it's worth 150 badges for a Hunter. It definitely compares well with current Hunter choices. You'll lose some hit rating and ranged attack power switching over from the Halberd of Desolation, but you'll gain a good amount of critical strike rating and weapon haste. Again, the kicker is probably how fast you need your ranged weapon to be. If the haste rating on this blade doesn't cause you to start clipping shots, this is a very nice stat stick for you to strap on. I myself will probably stick to my Vengeful Gladiator's Waraxe for now, both for the hit rating and armor penetration, but if you're looking for a good weapon upgrade, don't need hit rating, and don't want to do the Arenas, The Blade of the Harbingers is a strong option.

Armor

Leggings of the Pursuit - These are an all around great set of legs. They're more or less a sidegrade from Bow-stiched Leggings off Azgalor of Mount Hyjal, perhaps slightly better if you need the hit rating and don't mind losing a bit of critical strike power for it. These will probably get purchased sooner rather than later by me.

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Being a Priest in Blizzard's World of Warcraft has its advantages. For the most part, the buffs work like a charm to increase chances of victory.

If a Priest, however, can't cast these beneficial effects, then we have a rather serious problem. Jupitergodes from the Garona realm found out that she can't buff herself with the Power Word: Fortitude and Prayer of Fortitude.

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It's patch day, and as you know, patch 2.4 is bring us a new zone, Quel'Danas. Quel'Danas(and the region it directs you to in Hellfire Peninsula) is going to be packed and probably pretty laggy, but there's new content elsewhere, too.

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During Patch 2.4's time on the PTR, our own John Himes was there to participate in the world daily quests designed to unlock the content on Sunwell Isle. There are four phases and once enough daily quests are completed by your server, new daily quests become available to unlock the next phase.

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Once again, we find ourselves anxiously waiting for the World of Warcraft servers to come back up. However, today stands out as the best (and worst) variety of Tuesday downtime. Today we see the release of patch 2.4 and, for your addons, it is a day of reckoning. The majority of you are familiar with new content patches and the havoc they wreak on addons, but for those of you new to this; many of your addons could very well be broken.

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Take a look after the break for a mirrored copy of the live version of the 2.4 patch notes. This comes directly from the downloader, which is now working. The normal patch note site located at http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/ is not updated yet. However, I'm sure it will be soon.

One of the big changes from the PTR to the live realms is that CC non-breaking effects have been removed. You cannot Multi-shot with CC targets up and get a way with it (or a number of other abilities). This has been confirmed by Hortus, and thanks to reader Meph for pointing this out. However it should be noted that in the patch notes, Avenger's Shield will still not break CC. This is interesting and will be explored more once the game comes up.

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And by honor I don't mean the honor-as-currency system that's currently in the game -- I mean a sense of personal honor as in, there are things you make a conscious decision to avoid doing just as a moral gesture.

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Patch 2.4 is finally going live, and with all of the new content, it will be pretty overwhelming when you first log on and attempt to decide what you want to do.

With new loot, new quests, and new areas to explore, there will be plenty to keep you busy!

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As you guys will recall, Blizzard had announced that World of Warcraft's game patch 2.4 has finished its run in the test realms. Given that this means the patch will going public very soon, you're probably wondering what sort of preparations you'll need to make.

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Update 1pm CET: 2.4 Guides section added to the compendium.

Patch 2.4 today

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When someone had passed away, it's only fitting to pay your respects via a visit to that person's memorial. Player Litamay of the World of Warcraft Lightbringer recently did that. All it took was a visit the Shrine of the Fallen Warrior, dedicated to former Blizzard developer Michael Koiter.

As you can see in the picture above, Litamay stood before the Spirit Healer - aptly named Koiter - in silent contemplation. The Blizzard employee after whom the angel-sentinel is named died at the age of 19, in the middle of development on World of Warcraft.

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Many thanks to reader fLUx for sending me over to the European WoW site, which as usual, has better info than its U.S. counterpart. The service announcement reads "Weekly Maintenance - 26/03. This Wednesday there will be an extended maintenance to apply patch 2.4.0. Please note that all European realms will be offline from 03:00 until 11:00, Paris time (CET)." March 26th over in Europe is March 25th here in the States.

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Wondering how is Blizzard's progress in polishing up World of Warcraft's game patch 2.4 over in the test servers? To sum up Drysc's update over at the forums: It's over.

The community manager posted a thread to announce that they have just concluded testing for both the PTR and Tournament Test Realms.

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Russian gamers will finally get some WoW love, now that Blizzard is about to launch a fully localized Russian version of World of Warcraft within a few months. Gamers in Russia can also expect updates coming their way in anticipation of World of Warcraft's Russian-language launch.

Of course, this will also mean that Blizzard will open new message boards in their native tongue. And to serve Russian-speaking customers better, Blizzard is also currently seeking recruits who are well-versed in the country's mother tongue.

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Blizzard QA Hortus responded to a thread at the official forums of World of Warcraft earlier, where a puzzled Ahwas of Scarlet Crusade reported the most peculiar ability bug: the Hunter's Multishot feat now breaks crowd control effects, despite being a CC non-breaking skill in earlier builds.

The technically apt gnome and blue poster said that the missing non-breaking CC effect is not a bug - in fact, it's part of the changes to the new live server build.

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The in-game breaking news text just announced extended maintenance for tomorrow. This again, is a strong indicator that patch 2.4 is on the immediate queue. We can expect the down time to be at least until 11 a.m. PDT. This normally is substantially higher on patch days, usually lasting until around 1 p.m. or 2 p.m. PDT.

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