The efforts to retake the Isle of Quel'Danas proceed apace. Some realms are going faster than others, but Drysc assures us that even the low-population realms will get the phases auto-completed for them eventually if they don't have the manpower to get there fast enough on their own. What if you want to see exactly how the realms stack up? We talked last week about a manually maintained forum post; however, that has problems with trustworthiness and the difficulty of keeping it updated.

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About a week and a half ago I reported on an experience I had in Mount Hyjal while fighting Azgalor. While the fight went fine and we did him in one try, I wasn't on Azgalor's threat list and thus did not get any loot. I wasn't on the threat table because I had to tank some spawned demons up and away from the rest of the raid. It was a rather nice conflict of game mechanics.

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Tonight the world will be celebrating Earth Hour, with individuals, cities and businesses turning off and unplugging as many of their electronics and lights as possible. How can you get involved when you have a scheduled raid, or when this is the only time for you to play today?

You need not feel pressured to unplug everything. Turn out as many lights as you can throughout your home, unplug the electronics and appliances in rooms you are not using, and consult Well Fed Buff for the perfect lights-out snack you can prepare before 8:00 p.m.

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We've been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. I have been talking about Magisters' Terrace a lot. Lucky you, we're going to talk about it some more!

Magisters' Terrace is the brand new 5-man that came with Patch 2.4, so it comes across as much harder than it actually is. It is hard, sure, but not the soul-rending pain we're all feeling right now. All new dungeons require a period of adjustment. I remember when Dire Maul first came out, way back in the day. Everyone thought it was utterly horrifying.

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Do you read your realm forums? Simple question, eh? Personally, I make sure I at least take a look at my realm forums once a day, even if I don't post.

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A brief glance at the Dungeons and Raids official forum last night was a bit of a surprise. The third boss in Magisters' Terrace has inspired a lot of hatred and arguing. Why is that a surprise to me? Well, it's becoming one of my favorite 5 man boss encounters in WoW! Either the QQ is going strong on the official forums, or I'm a complete and utter masochist. I'm leaning towards that second one, considering Blackheart the Inciter is my former favorite.

If you have never seen this encounter before, or don't know how it works, Eliah touches on it a bit in his Magisters' Terrace guide. Basically, it's a 5v5 arena match. You can't tank it, there are no threat tables. It's a game of control and survival. Priestess Delrissa, who is a Holy Priest, can spawn with four random friends, chosen from a pool of eight.

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Every week, Arcane Brilliance endeavors to provide a small peek into the mysterious world of Mages. On Tuesday--in case you just teleported in from under the Dalaran bubble this morning and weren't aware--we got a new patch. This week, we'll take a long hard look at the patch as it relates to Mages, including some Mage-related observations and a giant list of all that sweet, sweet, cloth gear.

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Since the release of Patch 2.4, Blizzard has recommended to players that they delete the contents of their Addons and WTF folders to ease the transition to the changes made with the new content patch. I've had a few people ask me how this is done, so here it is, folks; how to start from scratch.

First off, it might help to understand where your addons live and how your preferences are stored. The guts of your addons live in the Addons directory, the working parts so to speak. When you configure your addons, these preferences are stored in the WTF directory, which also provides a home for your macros, video settings and any other preferences you are able to change. In order to truly "start from scratch", you will need to remove all traces of your addons and their associated settings. This can present some frustration to those of you who don't want to reconfigure all of your settings, but it is part of the price paid for patches.

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Several of you have passed word to us concerning an opinion article by Jim Lynch, a "journalist and community manager" from ExtremeTech. He recently wrote a piece concerning the "Ten Reasons World of Warcraft Sucks". If you would like to laugh a bit, I'd go over and check it out.

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Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses. Or wipe to them. Again. And again. And again... This week, we take our first steps into Sunwell.

Apparently, there's some sort of patch out, and with it some new raid instance. Wait, what? A new raid instance? After the months and months of farming BT to death?

Many of the raiders in my guild have been well and truly bored for a while, and we've seen a fair bit of attrition as people got so bored they dropped out of the game for a while. A new patch and a new instance brought some back; on our first raid this week, attendance was through the roof. With bags of flasks, potions, food, sharpies, seeds and caps, we ventured into Sunwell Plateau for the first time; read on for the raiders' lowdown on Kalecgos, the first boss you'll meet there. (Note, spoilers within!)

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Patch 2.4 is just a win all around, if you ask me. Very casual player? Only have an hour or less to play? Hit the dailies. Super-hardcore raider? Sunwell Plateau, baby, the hardest raid yet (or so I hear; I'll likely never see it myself). And if, like me, you flat-out love five-man dungeons, you have a new playground too: Magisters' Terrace, lovingly known as MrT.

The gallery below is a comprehensive, step-by-step, illustrated guide to the Terrace on normal mode, starting from the first pull and going all the way through to Kael'thas. First, some quick notes on group composition. In my opinion this isn't the hardest of the level 70 instances (that honor would go to Arcactraz or Black Morrass), so you don't need everyone to be group-specced or raid-geared, but it does help tremendously to have some crowd control available. The more, the better. And if you don't have much CC, you'd better hope you have a tank that can keep threat on multiple targets (might be a bit more difficult for Druids).

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Everyone loves the new daily quests. They're fantastic! Fast, easy, good rewards. Spread across the world so there's always somewhere else to go if a spot is crowded. Absolutely awesome.

The location of a couple of these daily quests has caused some inadvertent hilarity, though. The close proximity of the Throne of Ki'jaeden quests to Doom Lord Kazzak has sent the Hellfire Peninsula death toll skyrocketing. I was waiting for him to spawn for a few days, just to see how quickly he'd be taken down by people scrambling for gold, due to the changes to his loot. Specifically, making it all BOE.

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We are all rather critical of Blizzard at times. After all, many of us spend an inordinate amount of time in the game; especially the WoW Insider staff on patch days. We expect things to work in a certain type of way, and we expect that when we encounter a problem, things will be solved ASAP.

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If PETA were in WoW, they wouldn't be pleased with Nav. He just finished his first ever machinima, a teaser for his upcoming series, The Last Hunt. The video follows a boy who aspires to become a hunter and be one with nature.

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Hotfix for March 29

Drysc is doing a daily update to add all the latest hotfixes in that post.

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Pity the poor children of Elwynn Forest. Not only do they have to deal with doll thieves, crazy cat ladies, and those weird kids who enjoy standing in a pentagram, they can't even get a decent education. How could they, when sheep are clearly labeled as cows? Clearly, this situation requires the able hand of Commander Samuel Vimes to sort things out. Perhaps he can arrest Lazul, who seems to enjoy turning cows into sheep and then photographing them. Pervert!

Do you have any unusual 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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Yes it's Saturday once again, and that means that we'll go live this afternoon on WoW Radio with episode number 31 of our weekly podcast. This week, the talk will no doubt center around the biggest thing that happened in the last week of Warcraft -- yes, of course I mean patch 2.4. We'll have impressions of the content so far, a look at the official and unofficial changes, and a general breakdown of just what the heck happened to Azeroth on Tuesday.

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To drop or not to drop tailoring, that is the question. Well, it's the one on the mind of one player Skekses in World of Warcraft. Skekses admitted to not having found any lucrative use for the tailoring profession on Blizzard's forums. Nevertheless, the player was understandably hesitant about dropping it after having invested so much time and effort into learning the skill.

Not surprisingly, opinions on the matter varied among Blizzard forum members. Some WoW players suggested that Skekse drop tailoring only if the player is purely into PVP. Others extolled the virtues of other professions, such as engineering. Still others said that the value of tailoring will be more clearly seen in the Wrath of the Lich King update.

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Drysc is keeping a post up-to-date of all the latest hotfixes that are happening. Patch 2.4 went live without too much trouble this last Tuesday, yet there is a slow but steady stream of issues popping up in the game. Each morning for the next few days we'll let you know about all the hotfixes that have come out the previous day. You can also check out all of the hotfixes for Patch 2.4.

Yesterday's hotfixes include:

• Archmages's Guile, Battle Mace of the High Priestess, Terrok's Gavel, and Sedai's Blade have all been properly changed to Main-Hand Only weapons
  
• When taking the flight path from Ironforge to the Isle of Quel'Danas, you will no longer become fatigued and die if you had any buffs active which effect your ability to breathe underwater
  
• Looting Bind on Pickup items now properly brings up the confirmation dialog while using the Round Robin looting method
  


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As many of you are, I've been doing my duty to my server and pocketbook by completing the Shattered Sun Offensive daily quests every day. I have to admit, I was pretty disappointed that the reward for many of the quests is [Shattered Sun Supplies].

Before opening it, I was excited. I expected some nifty food and potions, maybe gems or herbs, and greens. I like to be surprised by some things, so I hadn't looked up the current loot list.

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Hotfixes for the Week of March 24 - 30
Drysc updated his post and the list of hotfixes applied on servers during the week is now much bigger.
Quote from: Drysc (Source) This thread will remain updated throughout the week of March 24 - March 30 with any notable hotfixes.

Hotfixes applied and active:

• Players are no longer able to accept the quests "Blood for Blood" and "Blast the Gateway" without first completing "The Missing Magistrix"
• Felblood Initiate respawn rate significantly increased
• Veneratus the Many now spawns correctly
• The Horde Spirit Healers in Alterac Valley will once again teleport Horde players to a different graveyard if the current once gets captured by Alliance
• Archmages’s Guile, Battle Mace of the High Priestess, Terrok’s Gavel, and Sedai’s Blade have all been properly changed to Main-Hand Only weapons
• When taking the flight path from Ironforge to the Isle of Quel'Danas, you will no longer become fatigued and die if you had any buffs active which affect your ability to breathe underwater
• Looting Bind on Pickup items now properly brings up the confirmation dialog while using the Round Robin looting method
• Reliquary of Souls, Prince Kael'thas, and other bosses now properly cast their spells
• The time before players with flags in Warsong Gulch receive the Focused Assault and Brutal Assault debuffs has been reduced
• The timer for Focused Assault and Brutal Assault in Warsong Gulch will now reset whenever both Flags are returned to their bases

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If Patch 2.4 of Blizzard's World of Warcraft has gotten you all excited, that's good. Player Daniel Whitcomb has some sobering news for you, however: there are certain things you simply cannot do yet, as much as you'd like to.

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Sometimes, all it takes is one disgruntled gamer to get the word out. Over on the World of Warcraft forums, Phoenix of the Bloodscalp realm was lamenting the loss of the roaring sounds of the Swift Zulian Tiger mount, writing about it in an all-caps post. Needless to say, someone took notice, and it just happened to be Drysc, the Blizzard Community Manager.

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When you communicate something, you need to make sure that your listeners understand exactly what it is you're trying to say. With World of Warcraft players' penchant for abbreviating things, communication can get real confusing, real quick. That's why Player Moop said that players have agreed upon a different abbreviation for Blizzard's Magisters' Terrace instance.

According to Moop, the WoW general chat consensus was to use "MrT" instead of  "MT" for Magisters' Terrace, to avoid confusing it with the Mana Tombs. Of course, other Blizzard forum members had their own idea of what a good abbreviation would be. Some of the suggestions offered include: MGT, MgT, MagT, magi, SwMt,  Sw5, SPLAT 5 and even Magic gathering The.

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The constantly changing realms of Blizzard's World of Warcraft are undergoing further tweaks brought about by hotfixes. In case you missed it, a thread on the WoW Forums headed by the community manager Drysc has an interesting updated list with an enlightening explanation of dynamic spawning that every WoW played would want to know.

First off, here's the current list of hotfixes for the week ending March 30:

• Players are no longer able to accept the quests "Blood for Blood" and "Blast the Gateway" without first completing "The Missing Magistrix"
• Felblood Initiate respawn rate significantly increased
• Veneratus the Many now spawns correctly
• The Horde Spirit Healers in Alterac Valley will once again teleport Horde players to a different graveyard if the current once gets captured by Alliance
• Archmages s Guile, Battle Mace of the High Priestess, Terrok s Gavel, and Sedai s Blade have all been properly changed to Main-Hand Only weapons
• When taking the flight path from Ironforge to the Isle of Quel'Danas, you will no longer become fatigued and die if you had any buffs active which affect your ability to breathe underwater
• Looting Bind on Pickup items now properly brings up the confirmation dialog while using the Round Robin looting method
• Reliquary of Souls, Prince Kael'thas, and other bosses now properly cast their spells
• The time before players with flags in Warsong Gulch receive the Focused Assault and Brutal Assault debuffs has been reduced
• The timer for Focused Assault and Brutal Assault in Warsong Gulch will now reset whenever both Flags are returned to their bases

Dynamic spawn was brought up when one player noted that increasing the Felblood Initiate's respawn rate could mean there'll be overkill of these creatures. Drysc was quick on clearing things up, saying there's no need to tone down the respawn of the critters since they dynamically respawn in the World of Warcraft.

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