World of Warcraft PvPers, here's a heads up. This year's WoW Arena Tournament is about to begin and the call for combatants has just been released. Yes, Blizzard has just opened registration for the new Arena Tournament.

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Finally, we reach the end of our grand tour of the phase 1 Shattered Sun-related daily quests. "The Multiphase Survey" is assigned by a doubtful Draenei named Harbinger Harnomen who can be found somewhat clockwise of the flight master in Shattrath, and it goes like this:

Go to the Spirit Fields in Nagrand, which are near that giant crystal Oshu'gun.

Put on the provided Multiphase Spectrographic Goggles.

Fly/ride around and look for Multiphase Disturbances (pictured), which are only visible when wearing the goggles. When you find one, get near it and right-click your goggles. The disturbance will disappear. Six of these "readings" and you're done; flutter on back to Shattrath for 4g, 250 Shattered Sun rep, and another Shattered Sun Supplies (c'mon, Badge!).

Seven daily quests later, what's our total take? 66 gold, 1550 Shattered Sun Offensive reputation, a Major Rejuvenation Potion, and two Shattered Sun Supplies. Not bad for the work of an hour or so.

Here is another Shattered Sun daily that originates in Shattrath, from Lord Torvos who stands just north of the flight master (right by where you picked up "Gaining the Advantage"). The premise of "Sunfury Attack Plans" is that we know that the Sunfury elves up in Netherstorm have some attack plans, and we want them. We want one of them per character, every day. So get yourself to Netherstorm, find some Sunfury elves (any Sunfury elves), and kill them until one of them drops the attack plans. I usually go for the mobs near Manaforge B'naar simply for convenience.

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You've dealt with automata and the Wretched on the Isle of Quel'Danas. You've slain demons and blown up the transporter at the Throne of Kil'Jaeden. Are there more Shattered Sun-related dailies left to do? You bet! There are three quests that are assigned in Shattrath, and here's one of them: Gaining the Advantage. Posts on the other two are coming shortly.

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Tipster Mike posted an unusual tip: apparently, to take part in the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament, residents of this great and potent land to the north, this utopia on Earth, this... Canada (I'm sucking up to my wife here, okay? She's Canadian.) do not have to pay for the privilege. No, no transactions of anything so tawdry as money need stain their hands. Rather than pay to play in the tournament, Canadians must simply write a small essay.

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You might be noticing some strange things in your "Raid Information" window. For many players it is showing that the timers are twice as long as they actually are. Ie: Kara is showing it resets in 13 days 8 hours, ZA is showing it resets in 5 days 10 hours, etc... You can access your raid info windows by going into the raid tab and clicking on the "Raid Info" button in the upper right hand corner of the window. The raid tab is part of the social windows, which you can access by pressing the "O" key (that's oh, not zero).

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Source: http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/pvp/tournament/

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Methedras asks once again over on WoW LJ if now is a good time to be playing the old Warcraft RTS games, and, actually no, now is probably not a good time to be playing them. You should probably be heading up to the Isle of Quel'danas and helping your realm and the Shattered Sun get those dailies unlocked.

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Now we're to my favorite part of a new patch -- sussing out the undocumented changes. Everyone's really known about the patch notes for months, but it seems like every time Blizzard releases an update, there are always plenty of undocumented changes that don't quite make it in.

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This is the companion quest to "Blood for Blood," and is given by Magistrix Seyla up at the Throne of Kil'Jaeden. In "Blast the Gateway" you take on a mission to help shut down the Legion Gateway, by means of an interesting quest mechanic.

Right-click the supplied Sizzling Embers to release a pet Living Flare, which follows you around. Contrary to what WoWWiki says, I find that it will not despawn if you use your flying mount, as long as you don't get too far away from it (so be careful on your epic mounts).

Find and kill the Incandescent Fel Sparks, which are fire elementals that wander the Throne area. They have a fireball, but like most of the mobs involved in the dailies, they're not hard to kill. Every a Fel Spark is killed with your Living Flare nearby, the Flare energizes. Note that you don't actually have to kill the Spark yourself; if you see some other people killing one, go help, and any flares in the vicinity will get energized.

Once your Flare accumulates enough energy (it takes about five kills), it will become "unstable" and turn green. Take it over to the Legion Gateway, near Magistrix Seyla, and it'll release its fiery power. Done! Talk to the Magistrix for 12g and 250 Shattered Sun rep.

I did have my Flare despawn on me once, but I think I flew up very high or something. I've definitely had it follow me on my flying mount just fine. But you should be careful, because if it does despawn you have to start the quest over.

Now that you've completed The Missing Magistrix and teleported to the Throne of Kil'Jaeden in Hellfire Peninsula (or flown there), you're ready to do Blood for Blood and its companion quest, Blast the Gateway (next post). Magistrix Seyla at the Throne assigns both quests. Blood for Blood goes like this:

Kill Doom Heralds, those big swordy demon things you see stomping around, and loot their blood. You need four, and it seems to be a 100% drop. The blood powers the Felblood Siphon that you'll use in the next step.

Find Felblood Initiates (pictured) casting wavy green things at the structures on the ground and cower at their eliteness. Now use the Felblood Siphon on them, and, just like the giants from Ferelas, they will weaken into non-elite pushover Emaciated Felbloods. Kill. Do this four times, and you're ready to return to the Magistrix for 12g and 250 Shattered Sun rep.

This was a fun quest, although last night it was absolutely impossible to find any Felbloods because of all the players competing for them. Much easier today though; they might have upped the spawn rate. The Felbloods stun briefly when you use the Siphon on them, which gives you a chance to get some distance and/or cast a spell. Next up is Blast the Gateway, which is a good quest to do at the same time as this one. I wonder where Kazzak is hanging out, though -- has he always been killed when I've been up there, or did they move him?

This isn't actually a Sunwell daily quest -- it's a one-time thing -- but it is done on the Isle of Quel'Danas, and it does lead to more dailies (keep an eye out for posts on "Blood for Blood" and "Blast the Gateway"). "The Missing Magistrix" is picked up from the Shattered Sun Staging Area, and asks you to go look after an operative gone AWOL by means of a portal and a scroll. You do need a flying mount to get this quest, since if you didn't have one you won't be able to get back from where you're sent without burning your Hearthstone.

Finding this portal seems to be very difficult for people, so I'll provide as much information as possible.

• The coordinates are 48,44
  
• It's south and very slightly east from the Staging Area
• It's subtly indicated on the map in the screenshot
• It is a wall of green glow similar to the Dark Portal into the Outlands


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Continuing our examination of the phase one daily quests in patch 2.4, here is "Erratic Behavior." It is easily done at the same time as the other Isle of Quel'Danas daily, The Sanctum Wards. It's gotten from the Shattered Sun Staging Area, and asks you to convert five Erratic Sentries into friendly ones by means of the magical crystals they give you.

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This news will be updated with additional changes, Sunwell kills and blue posts.

2.4 Undocumented Patch Notes

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Welcome to the first post of a new series on the daily quests available in Patch 2.4. I'll be going through all the quests that are available in phase 1, one by one. This is one of the two daily quests on the new Isle of Quel'Danas, and it's called "The Sanctum Wards." It goes well with Erratic Behavior, which I'll cover in the next post.

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I, like many other players, spent the better part of the morning running the new 5man Magisters' Terrace instance (and yes -- it is "Magisters'," so there is actually more than one Magister in it), and while not everyone is thrilled with it (I know some are saying that it's too hard), I love it. I pretty much agree with AA -- it's not that hard when you actually figure out what to do with CC, and get a handle on the fact that even on normal difficulty, this is a dungeon that doesn't let up.

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Yup, if you haven't gotten a ticket yet to the WWI event in Paris, you're out of luck -- the event has sold out. There's going to be a lot of cool stuff there -- demos of Wrath of the Lich King and Starcraft II, tournaments aplenty, and even some developer panels, but if you haven't grabbed a ticket, you won't be one of those things going.

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It is now day two of patch 2.4, and the madness is still well underway. The Isle of Quel'Denas is swarming with aggressive players (most of them seem to be mages for some reason) racing each other to the Wretched and the Sentries, not to mention people desperately seeking tanks, healers, and CC for MrT runs. (Alright, not many people are calling it MrT yet, but we're trying to make it happen.) And the Shattered Sun Offensive is progressing; my server is now 59% of the way through phase one.

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There's been a recent issue going around the World of Warcraft community which messes up the game's user interface. Many players noted that their combat logs tend to go through a massive loop once their character changes zones.

The problem was tied to the amount of framerate lag generated upon entering a new zone. This leads all the combat log messages posted in the last 5 minutes to repeat themselves. This problem is prevalent most especially in places with a large amount of spawns and other character activity (like raid boss encounters).

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15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous.

There's no easier way to introduce the subject of this week's 15 Minutes of Fame than this: If you enjoyed the movie Kill Bill, you'll love Gank Frank: A Raging Rumble of Retribution. Fenrix of Bloodhoof has crafted a quirky graphic novel that somehow blends Gnomes, Kill Bill, World of Warcraft and even a sprinkling of The Simpsons. Like most creative types, Fenrix has a lot to say. Here at WoW Insider, he lets fly on art, gaming and the World of Warcraft.

15 Minutes of Fame: What inspired you to create Gank Frank?
Fenrix: My inspirations come from a lot of different sources: movies, novels, comic books, other video games, internet fads, etc. This all forms into a huge, hodgepodge clusterfuck of material swirling around in my brain. I love telling and reading stories, especially those dealing with revenge. There's plenty of classic literature out there dealing with the subject of revenge, something that has always fascinated me, so it kind of felt natural to me when I decided to tell a story based around that idea. Revenge is one of the most primal forms of justice; it's something that we're all familiar with.

Aside from the subject matter, other obvious big influences would be the Kill Bill series created by Quentin Tarantino as it is what I base my plot and character development around. I remember seeing it for the first time in theatres and really being swept away by the story itself. The amount of punishment and hardship that Uma Thurman's character endures is intriguing and engrossing to me. You want to see her bloody plotted revenge fulfilled in the end; you want to see her succeed. I wanted to do something similar, so I used the basis of these movies to build the framework of the story.


Let's take readers behind the scenes of Gank Frank. How do you assemble a chapter? Can you give us a walk-through?
Well, when I first started Gank Frank back in 2006, I had no idea it was going to evolve into what it has today. Most of the work done on Chapter 1 was done in game via screenshots, with minor touch-ups in Photoshop. Since Chapter 2 I have been progressively moving away from that method and rather taking screenshots in game, and using programs like WoW Model Viewer and Photoshop to get the results I want.

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Welcome to the reality that is 2.4 addon pandemonium! It is a time of great sorrow, confusion and frustration. With the new patch, we've seen even the most crucial addon go up in flames. A large percentage of you count Ace addons on your list of must-haves, so you may be wondering why the Ace sites are slow or unresponsive since the patch.

I've been checking in on the Ace sites to see what I can find and have been regularly running my AceUpdater for Mac to keep myself current. Here is the current verdict (as of 1:45pm EST)

• WoW Ace Wiki: unresponsive
• WoW Ace Files: page loads but addons are up and down
  
• WoW Ace Updater page: unresponsive
• Ace Updater: Works sporadically, but normally showing no installed or available addons

For the most part, many of your Ace addons are probably working if you select "Load Out of Date Addons" from your Addons Interface.If I had to guess, I'd say the Ace troubles are due to massive amounts of site traffic, and calls to the Updater system. Keep in mind that of the millions of players, there are no doubt millions who use Ace addons. With so many people trying to update their addons at once, there are bound to be, and have historically been, site outages. Have patience, my friends, time heals all wounds.

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I admit it: I didn't do much exploring of patch 2.4 yesterday outside of running Magisters' Terrace. My guild did its usual raiding and I didn't want to take too much time to prep for it, so I didn't run any battlegrounds yet (how's the new AV so far, Alliance and Horde?) and barely got to run around killing some Wretched. So, let's talk about Magisters' Terrace, the new five man, which is what I got to see.

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I am not in the habit of trying to break websites, so I hope this update won't destroy the last chance for addon updates this afternoon.

I just reported that Ace and its affiliated services are down. Curse Gaming and WoW UI are also down for the count. There was an attempt to push you towards those sites and/or WoW Interface's Patch 2.4 Survival Guide, but they've all been the victim of a bandwidth cleave.

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For a guy that has enough hate mail to make it into a feature length movie "best of," you wouldn't know it. Stoker just keeps on making How to Paladins. Can you believe that he's almost at HtP30?

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After writing one of my first articles on an essay penned by Neg, one of Nihilum's resto Shaman, I was surprised and heartened to see him get in touch. We talked about a few matters related to our pieces and I asked him if he would mind answering some questions about what the guild's been up to since we spoke to them last. We hadn't heard much about Nihilum on the PTR (Vis Maior was the guild steamrolling the content this time out), but they've been upgrading and expanding their website, and one of the 2.4 raiding screenshots on Wowwiki belongs to them, so they've obviously been busy. It had also become clear that Awake, arguably their most high profile member, had left the guild, and I was curious about what was going on.

Neg very graciously answered my questions, which you'll find below the cut. Read on for his take on Sunwell Plateau and his favorite boss, Awake's departure, resto Shamans versus holy Paladins, picking up an enhancement Shaman and the class in PvP, various boss encounters, and WoW as an e-sport.

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Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers.

First of all, the above is not a recent picture. I just thought it was important for you to know that I'm the type of person who fondles larger than life, mostly naked, movie theater props hanging out in the back of pickup trucks. On to the questions...

What do you do for WoW Insider?
I write WoW, Casually, a column for casual players which is supposed to be weekly and will be again. No, really. I used to write Azeroth Interrupted, a column about balancing real life with WoW, but that is now Gamer Interrupted over on Massively. I also started Totem Talk, the Shaman column. Not that I play a Shaman, but I used to interview players who do. I was very happy that our very capable Matthew Rossi took it over after all of my interviewees stopped wanting to be interviewed. And I go through random blogging bursts which I am always hoping will become more of a regular thing.

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With Patch 2.4 finally out, the path is clear for the next big thing -- the Wrath of the Lich King. But even though a new path has opened, players shouldn't forget some of the rocky roads of the past. The doorways of Stromgarde Keep, ably captured here by Alarion of Cenarion Circle, used to be a huge pain for levelers. But after Patch 2.3, the monsters were morphed into non-elites, and questing characters could breeze through the area. How much the world has changed, in such a short time!

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or frightening World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see it on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

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Good morning, and welcome to the second day of the rest of your life. For better or for worse, patch 2.4 has gone live. I must say that progressive testing has made it a pretty wild ride. I look forward to the weekend when I'll have more time to explore the changes.
We've all had time to read the notes and tinker around with the new changes. My plan for the day was to check out the notes and then head on in the battlegrounds. I must admit that I didn't get a chance to try out the new Warsong Gulch. I'm sure I'll get to it soon once the queue settles down. I did get a chance to arena, and that queue was popping incredibly fast.Apparently Bornakk spoke the truth about queue relief.


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We've gotten quite a few tips and reports that there have been some issues with connectivity this evening. It seems many people have been getting disconnected upon leaving an instanced dungeon or battleground and are unable to log back in on that character.

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