Alright, this is only the ghost of a hint, but at this point I'll take what I can get with anything that looks reminiscent of a Wrath of the Lich King beta. A tipster known only as "Anonymous" wrote in to let us know that the URL http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com is active, and redirects to http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/game/character-copy.html. The logical conclusion is that this page is meant to let (authorized) people transfer characters for some sort of beta. And what's coming up that might be beta-tested? Wrath.

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After a player complains that they mistakenly paid 75g for wool cloth in the Auction House, Drysc confirms that Blizzard is all about caveat emptor: the auction house market is all about open trade, so if you buy something for the wrong price, it's all on you.

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A researcher at Middlesex University in Britain has conducted a survey of World of Warcraft players, almost 300 between the ages of 12 and 83, and found that people who play the game actually feel more relaxed before and after they play the game, rather than more aggressive at either of those times. Findings were supposed to be revealed today at a conference across the pond.

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It's now safe to go back to the forums -- the "lolcats," "lolwut"s, "lolz," and all of the other nonsense Blizzard put in players' posts have been deleted, finally. Blizzard hasn't given any hint why it took so long -- of course there's the chance that they just let the joke go on long enough (and trust me, you shouldn't be too angry at anyone who pushes an April Fool's Day joke longer than you think it should go), but it seems a little more likely that the folks in charge of the joke stumbled a little bit -- for a while there, it seemed like we might have "lolz" forever.

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2.4.1's had a chance to settle in, and as usual, people have been finding a few extra changes that didn't get in the patch notes.

There's nothing too earth shattering, though any Shamans out there who have been trying a dual-wield elemental hybrid build might be feeling a bit set back, since quite a few +spell damage one handers have been changed to main hand only, namely Sedai's Blade, Terokk's Gavel, Archmage's Guile, Seeker's Gavel, K'iru's Presage, and the Battle-mace of the High Priestess. Those of you jewelcrafters who have been feeling guilty about killing your poor Nightseye Panther will be happy to know that it now only fades away instead of dying when its buff ends.

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Here's something that didn't really hit me on the first few times through Magisters' Terrace: there are no loot chests in the instance. Eleste of Frostwolf asks why, but Drysc only answers "why not" -- apparently Blizzard isn't too bothered that the only loot to be found in the instance is on dead mobs.

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Aloud on the podcast last week, I wondered if the patch 2.4 changes to WSG had made a difference (I haven't been able to make it in there yet -- too busy writing about Hello Kitty Online, of course), and now maxomi is wondering the same thing: since the changes dropped, has WSG actually been fixed?

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After publishing a recent Breakfast Topic on whether there should be a sense of personal honor in PvP, I wasn't really all that surprised to see a few comments echoing the sentiments of "If it's red, it's dead" and "Don't roll on a PvP server if you don't want to get ganked." These crop up in any discussion about PvP, and while there's an undeniable sense to them -- why would you roll on a PvP realm unless you wanted to, I dunno, PvP? -- I've always felt that they did actual PvP a disservice. You can't frame ganking as true PvP. There's no such thing as strategy, skill, or even combat when a player one-shots another, so I've never considered ganking to be defensible along the same lines that actual PvP is.

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Even with the release of the new build for Blizzard's World of Warcraft, there were still a couple of bugs that were able to slip through the cracks and bother players.

WoW forum poster Lawlershape mentioned that the User Interface's (UI) chat windows still had a problem filtering through the correct channels enabled by the user. This problem was first spotted during the initial testing phase of patch 2.4 and still persisted even after patch 2.4.1 rolled out.

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If you've ever played any trading card game (TCG), then you'd probably know that one of the greatest pleasures in life is opening a booster box and discovering all the awesome cards in a new set.

The guys from Upper Deck Entertainment have just released a new set for the World of Warcraft TCG called Servants of the Betrayer and guess what, we got our hands on a booster box.

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Nehthaera today wanted to let a lot of the naysayers out there know a thing or two about their April Fool's jokes and the issues with the servers. She tells us the obvious, more or less: the people who do the April Fool's work are completely separate from the people that do the server and development work.

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If you've ever played any trading card game (TCG), then you'd probably know that one of the greatest pleasures in life is opening a booster box and discovering all the awesome cards in a new set.

The guys from Upper Deck Entertainment have just released a new set for the World of Warcraft TCG called Servants of the Betrayers and guess what, we got our hands on a booster box.

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I dug out this gem from almost a year ago because Stormscape Creations is preparing to release the second chapter of The Thaenor Chronicles any day now! The story centers around Zemeth and Zalek Thaenor, the last living members of their family.

While the visuals are well done, the voice acting leaves something to be desired. I also have to wonder why he only released the high-quality version on archive.org. If you'd like to follow along on his progress with the movie, check out Stormscape's blog.

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2.4.1 Unofficial Changes

As usual after each patch, here is the list of 2.4.1 changes not documented in the patch notes, it might be updated if new changes are discovered.

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Among the new stuff that's been keeping World of Warcraft's adventurers busy with the patch 2.4's arrival, none have gotten quite as much attention as the Sunwell Plateau. Given that it's a very new instance, however, there are also plenty of question circulating regarding its inner workings.

One topic that's popped up recently over at the forums is the question of how many turn-ins it will take to capture certain parts of the Sun's Reach staging area.

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Yesterday, after the realms finally came back from the small 2.4.1 patch, I logged on for my usual round of dailies. The first thing I did was to group up with another player for Distraction at the Dead Scar, hoping to get it done in one try. And we succeded -- in fact, we got it done by about halfway through the first run! I've never finished that quest that soon, even in a full group of five. So I grew suspicious that perhaps the difficulty of this daily was reduced in the patch.

And indeed, MMO-Champion is reporting that the following changes were made to the quest:

• Eredar Sorcerers now die in one hit instead of two
• Pit Overlords now die in two hits instead of three


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This section of Un'goro Crater is brought to you by the back aisle of Spencer Gifts.

Entendu of Destromath-US was leveling up a nelf druid on Andorhal when he came to the cave above the main camp in Un'goro -- you know, the one that you always have to run through five times while fetching stuff for J.D. Collie at the back of it. Rather than throwing down his keyboard in frustration, Entendu decided to turn catform, sit down, and groove on the multicolored lights. However, he declined the next quest -- stealing one of those hookahs from Silvermoon City.

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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Jamiea from the Jubei'Thos realm of the MMORPG World of Warcraft has posted his concern regarding a big fella, namely Doom Lord Kazzak.

Over at the official forums, he noted that whenever a player would attack Kazzak, those who pass by get to taste the monster's retaliation.

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As you all know, there have been many changes recently to the MMORPG World of Warcraft. Some of these are well appreciated by players while the others are just causing a lot of debates over at the official forums for the game.

One good example is the change implemented on the Tauren weapons. According to players, it is sometimes not fun when Blizzard creates changes regarding characters especially when this includes weapons.

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This morning, Damian Olson writes in with a concern that not all of the major WoW cities are created equal. In fact, he goes as far as to suggest that perhaps the Horde "got the short end of the stick" in comparison to their Alliance counterparts.

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You guys will probably remember a rumor we reported earlier which hinted at Blizzard's leveling mechanics for World of Warcraft's Wrath of the Lich King expansion. According to the rumor, the amount of experience points needed to go from level 70 to 80 would be 50 percent more than what was needed for level 60 to 70.

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As many an MMORPG gamer will tell you, it pays to be careful. If you happen to be a resident of World of Warcraft, you'll probably remember seeing some seemingly cheap items being put up for sale on the Auction House for ridiculously high prices.

It's a popular tactic often used to target new players, and those too busy to read all the details of what they're purchasing.

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World of Warcraft gamers might log in to the game to find themselves downloading a new file.

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Now and again, you'll come across someone who doesn't jump on the video game violence bandwagon. Miss Jane Barnett appears to be one such person. In fact, a study conducted by Barnett and her colleagues questions the popular belief in the link between online gaming and violence.

This is what Barnett did: she and her colleagues recruited 292 male and female World of Warcraft players between 12 and 83 years old. She asked the participants to complete a questionnaire on anger, aggression and personality. The WoW players then played the game for two hours. After that, the participants were asked to complete the questionnaire again.

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2.4.1 Updated patch notes
One of the changes made in 2.4.1 has been pulled out at the last moment and the patch notes posted yesterday were outdated, but I can't find the blue post anymore mentionning this change, I'd be happy if someone posted it in comments (it wasn't really important anyway). I also included the undocumented item changes and a few more changes, mostly from Elitistjerks.

The list of undocumented changes might be updated during the day.
Quote from Blizzard staff Hunter

• Tranquilizing Shot no longer incorrectly restricts use of other Hunter abilities in specific situations.

User Interface
Combat Log

• Only the last 300 combat log entries are now stored.
• Filter settings are now properly saved.
• Changing zones will no longer reload the entire log

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a sound engine error that was causing lock-ups on exit.
• Fixed a shader error that was causing kernel panics on Mac PowerPCs.
• Fixed a bug on Mac that was preventing the intro Cinematics from playing.

Undocumented world changes

• All NPCs in normal (and presumably heroic) Magister's Terrace give reputation at their previous levels, giving about 2k per normal run.
• The bombing run daily quest on Quel'danas has been changed : Eredar Sorcerers now die in one hit instead of two, Pit Overlords die in two hits instead of three.

Undocumented items changes

• The following items have been changed to Main hand instead of one-hand : [item=25920], [item=32537], [item=34667], [item=34670], [item=34671], [item=34790]
  
• [item=24128] doesn't die anymore at the end of the timer and just fades away.

Ordinn also gave an ETA for the end of registrations.
Quote from: Ordinn (Source)Sign-ups will continue until the third phase of the tournament.

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Sure, pets provide us with companionship. But on the flip side, they are another thing to worry about. Over at World of Warcraft, gamers have always encountered issues with hunter pets from the engineering level cap to today's Auto-cast Growl bug.

Growl is a pet ability which generates a lot of pure threat especially in Aggro situations. However, bug reports show that the spell can only be cast manually.

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Here at GW, we love even the small downs (heck, this week, we reported on a downing in the Stockades -- although it was by the Horde), but when other guilds are able to clear out the whole endgame in the time it takes you to go from one endgame boss to another, it's probably not the best idea to go on to the forums bragging how great your progression is.

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After reading an announcement on the evening of March 31st, 2008 declaring that Nihilum, whom we recently interviewed, would be quitting the World of Warcraft forever, WoW Insider received quite a lot of mail surrounding the issue. Was it true, or simply another April Fools joke?

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As promised, we now announce the Supreme Leader of Azeroth. And the Winner is- Thrall! Thrall carried a lead throughout the election and ended the race with 55.3 percent of the both, more than either of the Alliance candidates combined. Lady Jaina Proudmore finished the race in second place with 34.3 percent of the vote. King Magni Bronzebeard was disappointed in his 10.4% share of the vote, and has promised a better showing in future elections.

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