This week we take a trip once again into husky loot (a.k.a. cool items that anyone can grab) and dip into ye olde garbage bin at the Darkmoon Faire.

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A lot of World of Warcraft gamers have been experiencing a bug concerning their guild's daily withdrawals. According to reports, the bug doesn't allow the daily allocated withdrawal in their guild banks to reset at the end of the day.

Some gamers, such as Nookes, were able to bypass this by kicking out guild members whose daily withdrawals dropped to zero, and then inviting them back in again. Although this is effective, it means he has to do it each time the allocation drops to zero.

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Penny Arcade, those funny WoW comic guys, are giving away a metric ton of loot, via a contest, that they've gotten for the WoW Trading Card Game. Things that they're giving away include "four boxes of boosters, tournament playmats, a Winterveil collector's box, deckboxes, sleeves, two binders, three raid decks, three starter decks, and one of these awesome dice chest things." That's a ton of stuff to be handing out. But it gets better.

They're also handing out an X-51 Nether-Rocket card to each winner. You can get your very own Rocket Mount!

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In this installment of Addon Spotlight, I wanted to give you all a chance to alleviate the irritation that came with Patch 2.4 and the changes to the chat log. Notorious addon developer Tekkub has put together a quick fix to force the chat frame to apply filters at login. This will also apply to ChatFrame2, your combat log. Blizzard tried unsuccessfully to fix the problems with the chat log in Patch 2.4.1, so until they work out the problems, this addon can be your solution.

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Our weekly column "Two Bosses Enter" pits one boss against another in a do or die battle of force. You, the reader, decides who wins and who is banished to the pits of wowlolcats hell. However for today, I want expunge some of that nerd in me and do something different. Let's pit Karathress, the multi-mob boss fight from Serpentshrine Cavern again Kara Thrace, her namesake from Battlestar Galactica.

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If you're one of those folks who pines for the days of level 60 and Molten Core, but you've already installed Burning Crusade and made your way to 70, Slorkuz (who?) officially tells us you're out of luck. Once an account has been upgraded to Burning Crusade, there is no going back -- even if you uninstall everything and just put vanilla WoW on your PC, trying to sign in with your BC upgraded account will open up Outland and the latest content yet again.

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Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

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Despite promises of addressing the Arena queue time issue by patch 2.4, World of Warcraft players had to take an unbearable amount of time lining up just to get their daily dose of PvP loving.

The problem was first noted by WoW forum poster Tyveris, who mentioned that queues take as long as five to six minutes before any are processed. He even cited an instance where the waiting time stretched out as far as 15 minutes.

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The Euro WoW site has recently posted a brief interview with Tobias of the German workshop BattleHeat, a group that has recently crafted a real life set of Judgement, the Paladin Tier 2 armor set.

The interview gives some cool insight into the creative process of the armor, in addition to Tobias's training and experience as a Blacksmith. It is interesting to hear that while he has extensive technical training as a Smith, most of his know-how of crafting armor is largely through practice. It boggles the mind how much practice and hard work it must have taken to get to the level of expertise required to make a Judgement replica, but I'll admit I have no knowledge of the field myself.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors has a big post in mind, but wants some time to work on it. Well, okay, The Care and Feeding of Warriors has nothing in mind. It has no mind. It has no soul. It is just a weekly column written by Matthew Rossi. If it had a mind it might hate him for having told you that it doesn't, but since it doesn't, it can't even respond. Wow, this is getting kind of odd. Anyway, here's a column.

The other day, while grinding some of the new Sunwell Plateau dailies on my PvP warrior (this is him just before getting his season one shoulders) I happened to get into a discussion of specs with a warrior who had chosen a 51 point fury/ 10 point protection spec. It didn't last long enough for me to ask him why he chose that spec, unfortunately. Being that my 'PvP' night elf has a pretty unusual spec himself, although not as unusual (in my case, that spec is the result of wanting soloing viability for skinning mobs and I freely admit it is not maximized for PvP, I just haven't wanted to spend the money to respec a character I don't play all that often, comparatively) I was interested in the why of that spec.

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There is nothing we love more than a tasty and delicious game-related cake, be it Alliance or Horde (ok, a new content release is nice, too, but beggars can't be choosers on that one). And so this Alliance cake, made by Katalysta on Korgath for her husband's birthday, pretty much hits the spot. The crest looks great, but is that really icing on the "fabric" around the outside? Looks amazing -- no wonder it took her three days to put together. She says it's white chocolate flavored Fondant and plain Fondant, and everything else is done with dyes. Amazing!

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Despite the overwhelming support from our readers during our brief but flower-tastic adventures as HKO-Insider, I will be unable to delve any further into the professions of the Flower Kingdom. That's okay; they were prejudiced against jewelcrafters anyway.

Two weeks ago, I posted Insider Trader's guide to the final stretch of Alchemy, and Runstadrey posted the following comment in response:

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Generally speaking, the human race on Azeroth is in a sorry state. Led by a corrupt aristocracy ... manipulated by a dragon ... cheating contractors out of their pay for rebuilding the city ... and the only truly respected human leader is practically in exile due to her friendship with Thrall. How did the noble humans get where they are? What happened to the line of the kings of Stormwind?

Who: Llane Wrynn, Varian Wrynn and Anduin Wrynn.

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Sometimes our Moviewatch fans are inspired to try their hand at machinima. Such is the case with Gibbins, whose first creation, What a Wonderful World, is based on the song by Louis Armstrong. Even though it's his first time around, he's asking for constructive, not rude, feedback on his work.

After the sabotage accusation incident, I was reluctant to actually fulfill his request, but it's the only way that he'll be able to refine his technique. While there's nothing visually wrong with the machinima, other than an aspect ratio mistake with the model viewer footage here and there, it's really too literal. I would suggest coming up with a storyline.

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Daily Blue: Arena Tournament

WoW Arena Tournament Forum Opening (src)

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Void Reaver, after 2.4, is apparently, "wrecking fools," according to Korin on the Silver Hand. We all called him Loot Reaver before 2.4 -- if your guild could finish off Karazhan, and survive VR's trash, he was basically a pushover. But a whole combination of factors, including addon problems (with DeadlyBossMods and VoidReaverAlarm) that killed the addons that made it cake, as well as a few bugs and other problems with the fight after the patch, means Loot Reaver is getting his revenge. He's back to being a real challenge in Tempest Keep.

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Corrupting innocent kitty-cats? Will the Burning Legion stop at nothing? Actually, this is just a pic of the tauren druid Astaggrock from Eonar-EU taking a rest in Zangarmarsh. Astaggrock says he got the Glowing Blood debuff while killing giant fireflies and decided to wait for it to wear off before stealthing for his next attack. With the blackness, the horns and the electricity, he looks ready to pose for a heavy metal album cover. Assuming anyone actually bought music these days instead of just stealing it on BitTorrent.

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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Multiboxing -- we've mentioned it quite a few times here on WoW Insider, and it's always been a controversial subject. While the game is quite clearly not designed around players playing multiple characters at once, Blizzard has stated that they have no problem with it -- as long as people are paying for each account they use, and not using third-party programs to control their characters, Blizzard is fine with it.

But I, Mike Schramm, personally have always been quite against the idea of multiboxing. Lots of folks have used macros and programming to control multiple characters all the way up to level 70 and beyond, and some have even taken teams of characters into PvP areas to win battlegrounds and gain honor, or even win the arena seasons, and all the rewards that come with that victory. In my opinion, that's a horrible mockery of the way the game was designed -- this is a social game that is meant to be played with other players, and to pit one person with five computers against a real-life team of five people just isn't fair or interesting. Sure, you might be able to control the movements of five characters with skilled programming and control, but the other team has to coordinate five human minds all together, a much harder and more interesting act, in my personal opinion. I am firmly against multiboxing -- it's not the way this game is meant to be played at all, and while Blizzard may be content to make more money off of someone paying for many accounts, I'm not content to be stuck in a game with them.

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Here's some good news for the World of Warcraft Arena enthusiasts out in QJ land. Bornakk has announced that the official Arena Tournament forums are now live and ready for forumgoers to use.

As you can probably guess, the Arena Tournament Forums will be THE place to go to if you're looking to find information and speculation regarding everything Arena Tournament related.

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Recently received an email from Blizzard saying that they've caught you selling in-game items (even if you haven't) and are further demanding your private data? Careful there - you just might be the latest victim of an email scam that's just been reported over at the World of Warcraft forums.

This scam was initially reported by player Huntarded, whose friend was the recipient of the email. According to the email message, if the player was unable to reply to Blizzard with their personal info, the game GMs would close their game account permanently.

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On April 1st, Gadling blogger Erik Mclaughlin took a little trip to a place we all know well: Azeroth! He describes a bit of a lowbie safari than spans from the the treetops of Darnassus, to a safari in the Barrens, to the Mage Quarter of Stormwind. It's a fun little read, and reminded me of a question posed by Temperius of Cenarion Circle a bit back on the official forums: Assuming you didn't have to worry about being attacked, at least not too much, Where would you go if you could be a tourist in the World of Warcraft?

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The World of Warcraft's devs never seem to run out of woes with regards to the game's latest instance, the Sunwell Plateau.

Over at the game's Europe forums, Blizzard community moderator Thundgot is sending word that they've found "a pretty obnoxious bug" for the instance's Eredar Twins boss battle (Yes - it's them again).

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Tipping may be a good thing or a bad thing, depending on which connotation of the word you're referring to. On Blizzard's forums, World of Warcraft player Puerka meant the one that involves cash - cash for a tailoring service well done. Puerka wanted to know what other WoW players thought about asking for and receiving tips.

Responses were as varied as the Blizzard forum members themselves. Some WoW players wondered whether Puerka was referring to cow (Tauren) tipping. Others claimed that a tip isn't really a tip if it's asked for - it's a service fee. Still others claimed that they tended to get more tips when they didn't ask for them.

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It looks like folks who are getting ready for an early morning run through Azeroth may be in for an interruption. Nethaera posted an announcement on the World of Warcraft forums about some rolling restarts that'll be happening later today.

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Beta site activated in Europe
Remember yesterday's news about http://beta.worldofwarcraft.com/ being "activated" and showing a 403 "Forbidden" error instead of the usual "404" Page not found ? Well, it looks like things are moving fast because http://beta.wow-europe.com/ has been activated as well this morning ! It definitely looks like Blizzard is getting prepared for something.



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We've seen a lot of weird and annoying things - alongside the fun stuff, of course - in the years we've played the World of Warcraft. Well, we've got another one whilst trolling the WoW Europe Forums. Players over at the Priest forums noticed a change in the sound effect when they cast Power Word: Shield.

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Starting fresh on their way on Phase 3 of the Shattered Sun Offensive's multipart quest are the consistently performing folk at Proudmoore. The US realm of World of Warcraft is the first to have completed the Sun's Reach Armory - the second phase for the Sunwell World Event daily quests.

While a few percent shy of completing Phase 2, Blizzard's revered drooling tree, Drysc, conveyed his congratulations to the Proudmoorians who persevered a constant push through the Armory, despite any and all hindrance:

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There's a lot one can do in Blizzard's epic MMORPG, World of Warcraft - and one of them is to look for some of the more interesting landmarks in the game. And it's in this update of Around Azeroth, an online column at WoW Insider, that we catch wind of an interesting statue that a player by the name of Baldasarre of Mal'ganis found. It's a mysterious statue of an owl found in the floor of Terrokar Forrest. Scary.

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V'Ming - who thinks that gnome warlocks are travesties of nature and need to be KOSed has been bound with copious amounts of duct tape and is currently suspended by his toenails in the basement of the WoW Insider headquarters where he is currently serving as a practice piñata for the rest of the crew. Amanda Dean has temporarily hijacked his column to bring you this important announcement.

The servers are live and Blizzard's $120,000 arena tournament has begun. This is your chance to prove that your team is the best in the world, or at least among eligible participants. The first two qualifying rounds are divided into Asian, European and North American Regions.* You have to place among the top four teams in one of these rounds to qualify for the big bucks. Before you sign up, be sure to check out the official tournament rules.

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