Here's a bit of an odd update for World of Warcraft: it seems that Blizzard has tweaked the experience needed for players to reach Level 71 by 50 more - thus making sure that you'll be even more motivated to grind away at the game to reach that beyond-the-ceiling level. From 814,700 XP to 1,256,000 XP - that's certainly a lot of points.

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Gith of Skywell complained in the Bug section of World of Warcraft's official forums that the Blood Elf's last two hours in Magisters' Terrace were a complete waste. Apparently, the level 70 paladin died at the hands of Kael'thas Sunstrider, but at approximately the same time the corrupted Kirin Tor mage exhaled his last breath.

Gith swiftly returned to the spot where Sunstrider had fallen, but to his dismay, the corpse wasn't there to loot. Several other raiders had given their own accounts of similar results, and it appeared that patch 2.4 brought in another serious flaw - at least for the Magisters' Terrace (MST is it?) instance.

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Over at the World of Warcraft forums, gamer Volpes voiced concerns about an ongoing exploit in the capital city of the Dwarves, Ironforge. Dueling is not allowed inside cities but apparently, people can get away with it in Ironforge.

Volpes elaborates that you can get past the lifting ban by dueling behind the pillar to the right of the bank. From this location, the game sees your position as Dun Morogh and not as Ironforge. Hence, the dueling exploit.

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Continuing their trend of improvements no one actually asked for (hello, combat log!), Blizzard today released pages on all the raids and dungeons to be found in Burning Crusade, with the notable exceptions of Magister's Terrace and Sunwell Plateau (but maybe they'll come later). For each dungeon or raid, the pages have the following information: location, number of players, level range, associated faction, theme (Karazhan, for instance, is "Haunted Wizard's Tower"), key, reset timer, number of badges, abbreviation, final boss, and a link to the loot table.

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Patch 2.4 has been upon as for almost a week now, and that's long enough for Wowhead to have collected reliable data on some of the interesting new things in the patch. Here's what I've noticed, leading off with what is (to my mind) the most interesting piece of information:

• Shattered Sun Supplies have a 10% chance to contain a Badge of Justice
• Wretched Fiends and Wretched Devourers each have a 30% chance to drop Mana Remnants for "Arm the Wards." Though this is probably reduced a bit by players who kill the Wretched without having the quest, I think 30% is close to the true drop rate (based on my own observation).


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Be alert, hunters: Growl isn't casting first anymore, and it's making aggro touchy. Mania, that hunter maven and proprietor of Mania's Arcania, breaks the news. It's unclear (especially to me, since I don't have a hunter past level 26) if this is actually new or just a consequence of the new combat log system that rolled out in patch 2.4 but if it is new, it could be a nasty surprise for you hunters out soloing.

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Okay, so technically Waaagh! is a Warhammer Online blog, but we'll forgive Syp this time, if only because S/he writes a pretty good article about choosing your character's name. The first part of it is, to me at least, good common sense. Don't choose a name you'll regret or a name that looks overly bad to other people. Naming after real life celebrities can get a bit tired. Naming your character "something naughty" is probably just going to make most people think you haven't cleared puberty yet. And yeah, it might be funny to call your character Rickroll NOW, but when Rickrolling is the next "All Your Base", everyone on the internet is going to point and laugh at you for being old and busted.

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Yes, loved by some and hated by others, tomorrow is 4/1, April 1st, known around the world (or at least the Internet) as April Fool's Day, and odds are that you'll have a lot of fools trying to play with your head. As you probably know, our friends at Blizzard love April Fool's, so you can probably expect to see some shenanigans from them tomorrow.

Just to get you ready, here's a quick roundup of what they've done in the past few years. It seems like they've been upping the ante for a while now, so be "prepared": you never know what we might hear from them tomorrow.

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European World of Warcraft players, rejoice! Telia Sonera and Cogent Communications have finally signed a new contract, ending the dispute that led to a lot of WoW players in Europe being unable to log in to the game.

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The European World of Warcraft Arena Tournament realm is supposed to be live right now. Unfortunately, Blizzard poster Slorkuz has announced that there has been a delay in opening the tournament realms.

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Our good friend Boubouille at MMO Champion has news of an XP change in the game, but not where you might expect. Blizzard has secretly changed the amount of XP earned... at level 70.

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The idea of being able to customize your character's look and feel beyond choosing one of 4 or 5 basic face and hairstyle choices at character creation or upgrading to a new piece of loot is one that's near and dear to me. I'm an RPer, so I like to think of each of my characters as a unique person with unique quirks, ideas, and fashion sense that I can't always express as I'd like to due to the limitations of WoW's mechanics. I've even had some very good friends quit WoW because their characters weren't customizable enough.

The idea came to the front of my mind a few weeks back when I was visiting my brother. We played EverQuest together, but when it came time to move on from that game, he (and most of our EQ guild) chose Everquest 2, and I chose WoW. So, of course, he ribs me about it quite often, and since I was visiting, he decided to load up EQ2 and show me what I was "missing."

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If you checked out the unofficial changes in patch 2.4, you'll have noticed (or just heard on the realms) that quite a few sounds got changed. Some are louder (as in that annoying PW: Shield sound), some are quieter, and some are just plain missing (it's a known bug that Tigers and Sabers don't roar anymore). But this brings up an interesting debate: many players are saying that they never would have noticed -- they rarely ever play with sound on anyway.

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WoW Rookie is brought to our readers to help our newest players get acclimated to the game. Make sure you send a note to WoW Insider if you have suggestions for what new players need to know.

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As I've mentioned in a recent warrior column, I'm running the new Alterac Valley on my prot warrior. Mostly it's not intended to accomplish anything, it's just to see how I'll do. I average about four games before I get bored and go do something else. However, in the days leading up to patch 2.3, these four games would probably have been miserable timesinks with no honor gain to show for it and a lot of complaining in /bg.

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

Most guilds see members come and go from time to time. It's never a pleasant feeling to see someone leave, but in most cases you know why they're leaving. That gives you and the other officers the opportunity to fix the problems that led to their departure, so you don't lose anyone else for the same reason. By far the most frustrating gquits are the ones where people just disappear with no explanation. That's what the author of today's e-mail is facing.

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It's been three months since Spiffworld made his last Jonathan Coulton machinima, Chiron Beta Prime. However, the last time I blogged about him was the V-Day Riot of '08, and I'm still in therapy. This time around, the worst you'll see is a second of human buttocks, and it's in context with the story ... about pants. It'll be over before you know it!

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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 "Lovelorn in Azeroth" writes in:

WoW-Playing Girlfriend Drama

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Europe: Arena Tournament opening time

As we’ve moved into Daylight Saving Time since the publication of the Arena Tournament Official Competition Rules, we’d like to clarify that the intended opening time for the Arena Tournament is 10:00 GMT, i.e. 12:00 (noon) CEST (Paris time) and thus 11:00 BST (London time).

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Patch 2.4 XP Changes - WotLK preview ?
It looks like a change went unnoticed on the 2.4 PTRs, Blizzard changed the XP required to level up at ... 70 ! Before the patch players needed 814,700 XP to level to 71, but since tuesday you need about 50% more xp to reach this level, bringing the total to 1,256,500 XP. According to a few reports this change was made because of an interface bug but increasing the max xp by 50k or 100k would have been enough to fix it, this leaves us with another theory : leveling in WotLK will require 50% more xp than what you needed in BC, it wouldn't be surprising and would be equal to the same difference of XP between Burning Crusade and WoW classic.



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If you've been following your server's progression through the current World of Warcraft event, Capture of Sun's Reach and Opening of the Sunwell Gates (or the event spearheaded by the faction Shattered Sun Offensive), you might have noticed something iffy about certain low to mid population servers getting ahead of the progression list.

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