var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/What_we_know_about_WoW_s_Death_Knights'; Winter is coming: reports have it that WoW's next expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, is in alpha. Wrath will feature a raise in the level cap from 70 to 80, access to the continent of Northrend with ten zones, the new profession of Inscription and, perhaps most exciting of all, WoW's first new class: the Death Knight.

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WoW Insider co-lead Mike Schramm brought up an interesting question for today's Breakfast Topic; how can players utilize the Focus Target feature in World of Warcraft? Macros are certainly a great way to manage your focus target and what is being done with it. I've yet to write a installment of Macro Anatomy that covers the topic, so where can one turn if you want to utilize this feature?

Bad boy developer Tekkub has created Control Freak for people wanting to have fun with the focus target and their crowd control abilities. Granted, there are a lot of other things you can do with this feature, but this addon very efficiently automates the process.

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Like the ol' Orb of Deception, here's another fun toy -- that's brand new in patch 2.4.

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Last week, Insider Trader began the journey from 300 to 375 jewelcrafting skill. While we were able to avoid using recipes that required faction reputation or that had to be farmed, the cheapest methods to 375 from about 365 may require a bit more effort to obtain.

If you are like so many other craftsmen, stuck with 375 seeming far away and expensive, then carry on through the break to examine ways to not only maximize your skills, but to attempt to make a profit while doing so, rather than running on a loss.

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WoW Insider readers are a talkative bunch. All of us here at WI monitor our own posts for comments, but there's not always time to keep up with what's happening on all the other posts. And if those of us who hang around here all the time can't keep up, we wondered how much our readers were missing, too?

Enter [1.Local], our new roundup bringing you a smattering of the zingers that may have gotten buried in the peanut gallery. We'll serve up both the sublime and the ridiculous, the thought-provoking and the just plain silly -- definitely a cut above Barrens chat (although we do admit that "Barrens Chat" was a strong contender for the feature's title).

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Yes indeed, after our short foray into multiboxing last week, the WoW Insider Show is back in its original form this week -- not only will Turpster be back in the WoW Insider Show studios, but WI's Zach Yonzon will be on with me, and we'll have all of our usual features: listener mail (you too can email us at theshow@wowinsider.com), shout outs (I swear I'll remember to do them this week, guys), and the best gosh-darned discussion of the biggest news in the last week of Warcraft, including, but not limited to, yesterday's Wrath alpha news, how all the servers are doing on the Sunwell dailies, and everything else going on at the Sunwell.

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Slorkuz, Mr. Blue Poster over on the European WoW forums, gave us a few hotfixes that have been pushed through this week:

• Shattered Sun Pendants of Acumen and Might will now be triggered only by spells and abilities which cause damage.
• Shattered Sun Pendant of Might will no longer break crowd control effects such as Scattershot with its triggered effect.
• Shattered Sun Pendants of Acumen, Might, and Restoration now all have correct range limits.


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WoW Insider has come across a potentially leaked image of a map of the new Howling Fjord zone. This information comes hot on the heels of our announcement yesterday of the closed alpha testing of Wrath of the Lich King, the second expansion to World of Warcraft. The image has been posted today at several spots around the internet.

Howling Fjord will be one of the two starting points for those entering into Northrend. The other starting zone will be the Borean Tundra. Wrath of the Lich King will raise the level cap to 80, introduce the Death Knight class, new PvP warfare, and new group and solo play.

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With the release of patch 2.4 for Blizzard's World of Warcraft, many players were expecting a lot of changes with the new update. In particular, forum poster Caiaphas believed that 2.4 would become the veritable "PvP balance patch" that would help balance out gameplay.

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Rumor has it that Blizzard's World of Warcraft expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, has already hit closed alpha testing and that various players have already received invitations to see it, with a non-disclosure agreement.

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Totem Talk is on the wrong day because Matthew Rossi had a big bug in his bonnet (what? No, I don't know if it was a bee or not. Look, I'm not sticking my head into a bonnet to check the kind of bug in it. No, you go look if you're so interested! It's a bug, that's good enough for me) about expert ease or something. Anyway, today we're going to talk about the future of the Shaman class now that there's a new expansion on the horizon.

Wrath of the Lich King is in Alpha. That means... well, it means some folks are playing around with a really early version of the next expansion. It also means that we hearken back to the last time WoW had an expansion, and start considering how the classes will change. Will there be new talents? If so, we'll see even more specialization between talent specs. If not, we'll see a lot more broad viability as people find ways to spend ten extra talent points.

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My lovely and talented wife (she of the hunterish disposition) and I were talking last night about DPS in raids and instances. Specifically, an aspect I'd never really thought about before: how 'expensive' is the DPS of particular classes? Is it sometimes worth it to bring a lower DPS class over a higher one because the lower class is cheaper to maintain? And what, exactly, defines 'cheap' or 'expensive' here?

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Anyone watching Nihilum's recent achievement closely would notice a few odd things. It was notable that the kill was achieved without a single Rogue, or more appropriately, melee DPS class in the raid. Nihilum guild leader Kungen is renowned for his traditional views on class roles, although he is open to off-specs and has even taken a Retribution Paladin on a progression kill. But there's always a simple explanation behind each of their actions (no melee classes were on, can't have all Paladins specced Holy for this boss, etc.). Interestingly, my armory-trolling cousin pointed out something curious that a close inspection of Nihilum's raid make-up would reveal: only three members (including Kungen) aren't Leatherworkers. You read that right, that means even cloth classes dropped old professions in favor of Leatherworking. The thing is, this trend isn't restricted to Nihilum. The most dedicated, progressive guilds in the game have many of their members going for Leatherworking.

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var digg_url = 'http://www.wowinsider.com/2008/04/11/chinese-wow-hits-1-million-concurrent-players/'; The9, which is the company that runs Blizzard's World of Warcraft in China, has announced today that the game has hit a full million concurrent players (which means that they've had one million people playing the game all at the same time) following the release of the Burning Crusade expansion there last year. Here in North America, concurrent users hasn't really ever been as high (although that is of course unofficial data, and we don't have information after the first month of this year). But MMOs are a different beast in China and other Asian countries -- not only do players pay-to-play (instead of a monthly fee, many players often pay hourly or daily, which means concurrent users equals paying users), and there are actually three games that have hit a million concurrent users over there (while here, WoW is far and above the largest MMO online).

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(We're hijacking this little spot here to let you know that Never Stay Tuned 3 is out. Olibith informed us the other day that it's a little too naughty for this blog.)

Shepiwot is so close to Episode 30 of his How to Paladin series! Episode 29, or XXIX, finds him in Quel'danas and killing Kael'thas. At what point do you think that he'll get a lifetime achievement award? With 71 machinimas under his belt, of which none of them have been sabotaged by me, and one WCM recommendation, we definitely think that he qualifies!

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Geoff, who declined to leave his name or server, wrote "Some people never notice the Eagle / Bear tree, even though it's almost smackdab in the center of Darnassus." Count me as one of those people, because while I've leveled tons of little night elves up through Teldrassil, I've never before noticed that the bank is actually a statue of two druid forms. I guess that sometimes you just have to look at things from a distance to get the full picture.

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Wrath of the Lich King is now in Alpha Phase

According to several insider sources and WoWinsider, Wrath of the Lich King the second and next expansion of World of Warcraft entered into the alpha testing phase.

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Each week or so, Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player who has 2 hours or less to play at a time.

Let the raiders have fun with their world firsts, Blizzard also kept those of us with limited playtime in mind when designing the Sunwell activities. If you are level 70 and haven't gone over to the Isle of Quel'Danas, get thee to a Flightmaster in Ironforge or Silvermoon and get in on the fun.

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Blizzard poster Drysc has announced several changes made to World of Warcraft over the past week. These fixes were particularly centered on the Shattered Sun Pendants. They're minor updates, but if you happen to use those pendants, you might want to read on.

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Yesterday, I bashfully admitted that I don't use the /focus feature in the default UI as much as I should -- in fact, aside from a totem dropping macro I put together a long time ago, I haven't used macros nearly as much as I should. It's not that I don't want to -- I'm sure I could be a better player with more macros (like the ones found in our Macro Anatomy column) -- it's just that as I said in the /focus post, there are so many ways to use macros that it's kind of tough to figure out just where to put them in your gameplay.

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So when patch 2.4 came out, you might remember a certain line in the patch notes: "Added several new tradeskill items to the new Sunwell Daily faction vendor: Three jewelcrafting recipes to cut gems with spell haste from Dawnstones, Talasite, and Noble Topaz."

Here's the problem: Those recipes actually don't currently exist anywhere in game, or at least haven't found their way to any Jewelcrafters. You can find Quick Dawnstone, Reckless Noble Topaz, and Forceful Talasite on all the WoW item database sites, but the recipes themselves seem to have gone missing, and aren't on Eldara Dawnrunner, nor do they so much as appear to drop from any mob.

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Wrath of the Lich King - Alpha starting
Two days ago I wrote a few lines concerning the first phase of alpha testing for WotLK. During the last few days it's been confirmed by a few other sources and sites and we can assume it will be starting very soon, however there are a few very important point of details you've got to keep in mind :

• The alpha isn't public, it's mostly restricted to Blizzard employees and a few other people but if you're a normal player you won't be able to enter it.
• People participating in the alpha testing have accepted a strict NDA and aren't allowed to post even a single screenshot from the expansion.
  
• Any email or site asking you to sign up for the beta is a scam, the only goal is to steal your account.

Blizzard will make tons of announcement when the first phase of public testing will start, and won't send any mail before that.
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)Email. It's why when it comes time for a beta, we will remind everyone (sometimes to the point of annoyance) to please please please update your contact information and email. There were many people that never got an invitation because they had a bad email.In short, the first phase of beta testing started, it doesn't mean we'll get new information about the expansion anytime soon, and if you were a part of alpha test phase you'd already have your account by now. As soon as you get a chance to enter the beta Blizzard will make sure that you know about it before sending anything in your mail.

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