This week's round up of WoW-related posts on our sister site Massively covers many different angles of the MMO universe dominated by World of Warcraft. You can click on the links below or subscribe to a special WoW-only Massively feed.

Player vs. Everything: Raid leaders are jerks
Most raid leaders I know are jerks. I'm not making generalizations about personal character, of course. People who end up in those positions tend to be helpful, dependable people who are genuinely committed to the progression of the guild.
MMOGology: Gamerz is speshul
Gamers have always taken a degree of flack about their hobby of choice. Some people call gaming a waste of time (whereas watching TV is completely productive), some people bash it as anti-social escapism...
Making/Money: Newbs at Auction
One of the most frustrating aspects of being a new player in an established game, to my mind, is the cost of start-up crafting materials. Hit up any public market area, auction house, trade square or similar as a newbie and you will see what I mean.
Player vs. Everything: Learning by doing
In most MMORPGs, it's practically considered a right of passage to learn advanced concepts by the sweat of your brow and with a big helping of independent research. We're MMO players, after all! We don't need tutorials guiding us through the advanced aspects of the game. Right?
Stephen King goes batty about video games
Stephen King is "the man." He's one of my favorite authors and a very big reason why I'm a writer today. I've followed the ebb and flow of his career, from his meteoric rise (and eventually perpetual stay) on the New York Time's Best Seller list...
WoW blamed for bad parenting
Here's a recent news item from the Contra Costa Times, about a kid who played way too much World of Warcraft: "[World of Warcraft had become] the one place he was joining the world. Bringing him back to the real world took...

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We've heard your calls for more coverage and we're happy to announce new writers are incoming. You have already seen the work of our two newest columnists, Shelbi Roach and Jennie Lees. Shelbi comes to us as half of the husband-and-wife team at The Bronze Kettle. Her crafting prowess is already on display in the weekly World of WarCrafts feature with step-by-step how-tos on a simple scroll and super potions.

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Players are reacting to (quite a few things, actually, in) the Tom Chilton interview we linked to earlier, but one of them is rubbing a lot of older players the wrong way -- when Gamespy asks Chilton about world PvP, like the kind that took place between Tarren Mill and Southshore, he called any fondness for that "nostalgia" -- he says that people didn't really like it at the time, they only want to go back to that because they're nostalgic for it.

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I love this -- miladyhikara is working on a series of sketches featuring "Bad Girls of Warcraft," and the beginnings of the pieces are now up over on her deviantART page. They look fantastic -- I especially think this Shivarra looks good, but she's also got a female Naga, a Succubus, and Lady Barov herself. She says she's working on color palettes for most of them, so we'll have to wait to see the finished product -- if the sketches are any indication, they should look amazing.

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 If you were having a hard time connecting to Blizzard's World of Warcraft Tournament Realm, it's because the servers were recently shut down for some urgent maintenance. You shouldn't have any problems with it now though since the realm is up and running

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Yesterday, I reported to you that Google (via Stopbadware.org) had marked wowui.incgamers.com (which redirects to wowui.worldofwar.net) as a bad site. Today, the site is reported as clean according to the same report (you can check it out here).

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Yes, episode number 33 of our podcast is now up for download over at WoW Radio, and if you're a big fan of the show, it's a doozy. Since we haven't done our "normal" show in a few weeks (because of the interview with Xzin last time around), we decided to go all fan service, and caught up on all the shout-outs, fan email, and other fan shenanigans we usually do (there's even some Turpster love poetry). But even if you're not down with the silliness, there's lots of good WoW news in this week's episode, including:

• Some good discussion about the Wrath alpha news and what it means
• A look at what's going down on Sunwell Plateau, including the Aldor and Scyer neckpieces
• And a little bit about the Gurubashi Arena in STV
• Plus we answer all kinds of email questions, including rested XP in expansions, what's wrong with Blackout in a shadow priest spec, and whether we should call the new five man MrT or MgT


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Gamespy has an interview with WoW's lead designer Tom "Kalgan" Chilton about the upcoming Arena Tournament (which WoW Insider is actually playing in), and there's some good discussion in there about the PvE vs. PvP split and what Blizzard is planning for the Arena tourney and the game in general.

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There have been a number of players who complained about the art used on the new badge items in Blizzard's World of Warcraft. Community Manager Nethaera answered these concerns from the players on the MMORPG's official forums.

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So here I am at level 70, back in the land where your mom is that easy and Chuck Norris is that cool: The Barrens. I'm not here to save the Crossroads from ganking Allies and I'm not here to run noobs through Wailing Caverns (so stop asking). I'm here to fish.

Fishing is the one secondary skill I didn't work on because, well, it's boring. But now that you can make tons of cash with the new Fishing Dailies, I'm leveling up fish-catching skills. The problem is that once you get to 225, and finish that annoying quest with Nat Pagle, fishing gets even more boring than it was before. No matter where you fish, each skillup is farther apart and you have to hang out in places that are far below your level if you don't want to miss a lot.

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EU Stormscale Guild adult swim were recently interviewed by Nihilum (you know, those guys) for downing Gruul the Dragonkiller with a Karazhan-short 8 people. Nihilum had released a video of their guys doing Gruul with a mere 15 raiders, and it was something that adult swim leader Snookiwooki said was "pretty easy". According to Snookiwooki, adult swim had a fairly light raiding schedule and were merely looking for "stupid things to do outside of raids". Because of the nature of the fight, adult swim stuck to ranged DPS to minimize worry about cave ins.

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There are funny Blizzard's World of Warcraft machinima videos, and then there are funny World of Warcraft machinima videos. That said, we don't quite know just where to put this video aptly titled Big Cow Man, where two young siblings venture forth to meet their untimely ends with the Big Cow Man. Well, at least the voices are pretty funny and convincing, we'll give Guildstory that.

And while we could all see the ending coming from a while way, it would've been neat to see the actual thing happening, rather than just the sound effects. All in all, though, this is a video that you might want to watch, if just to see how weird the production is.

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The AETG, or Azerothians for the Ethical Treatment of Gnomes, won't be happy about this video. It looks like Pinkhair isn't the only 3D animator around, as Macky shows us what he does in his spare time -- gnome punt. This clip is ridiculously short, but we like the rendering that we see so far. It claims to be part of a Gnome Chronicles, so we look forward to seeing something longer in the series!

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Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, the Big Bear Butt Blogger, comes late to the party with a mammoth of an article that hopes to cover bear tank gear choices from dinging at 70 up to and through running Karazhan with your guild.

Gearing up as a bear tank

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Blizzard Insider Interview: Fury of the Sunwell and Wrath of the Lich King

World of Warcraft lead producer J. Allen Brack and art director Chris Robinson were recently interviewed about the last patch (Fury of the Sunwell) and Wrath of the Lich King.

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15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – both the renowned and the relatively anonymous. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.

How long does it take you to get to level 70? This week's 15 Minutes of Fame shines its spotlight on a young player who has drifted placidly along for one and a half years, up to the grand old stature of level 49. Molii of Argent Dawn has spent most of his WoW life roleplaying. As time has crept by, though, his perception of the game and its myriad goals and attractions have morphed, and Molii is hearing the siren song of raiding and the Arenas. Will he get serious about leveling? Where will he end up focusing his game time? We'll peek inside the motivations of an eighth-grade gamer to see where he might be headed next.

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Maintenance day is underway until 2pET/11aPT and many WoW fans are searching for something to do, while players with day jobs log on to point out that they can never play during these hours. Fortunately, we have lots going on today, as well as some highlights from the past week that you won't want to miss.

Wrath of the Lich King:

• Compilation of everything we know of to date about Death Knights, the new hero class we'll be seeing with the expansion.
• The new expansion is now in alpha testing! Read on to find out what this means, as well as what it doesn't mean.


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Well, first off, Area 52 clearly isn't adequately protected against giant robot attacks. And the use of ogres as security guards is now considered a safety hazard in and of itself. That big wooden water tower thing looks like it's about to crush the inn, and fireworks plus wooden structure do not equal a good time. Plus, wolves aren't allowed within city gates. Thank you, Borvoh of Duskwood, for bringing this to the attention of the Azerothian Health and Safety Organization.

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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Ok, I know we already covered this yesterday, but what can we do? When we see something that blows us away (and concerns World of Warcraft, of course), we just have to share it with you. Tipster Salaami pointed me to a papercraft site made by Canadian blogger PMF, an architect who seems to enjoy making papercraft models of World of Warcraft. He hasn't made models in a few months, but if you're into papercraft -- or, since it is extended maintenance -- you can try your hand at constructing a few of the plans yourself.

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I had the opportunity to play on the Tournament Realm with Amanda Miller and Adam Holisky on Friday night. Yes, we got schooled but we had a great time. As Amanda mentioned I rolled a Resto Druid, but I specced short of tree form. I was most interested in mobility. I usually heal arenas as a Resto Shaman. I really enjoy the mobility of the druid, and I'm afraid I would lose that in tree form. Take a look at my spec, for those of you who know Druid better than I, tell me where can I improve?

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As I was perusing the very first review of Grand Theft Auto 4 yesterday, I noted that the "collectibles" in that game are going to be pretty intriguing. While a lot of collectible items in games (say, all the packages in the previous GTA games, or the flags in Assassin's Creed) are fairly superfluous, I find that some (like the orbs in Crackdown and the billboards and jumps in Burnout Paradise) actually make the game more fun -- while traveling through the game world, you can keep an eye out for extra stuff to do and see.

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If you're a World of Warcraft player who absolutely must have have everything related to WoW, here's some good news: DC Unlimited has recently announced the latest addition to its deluxe collector figures series: Tauren hunter Brave Highmountain.

Brave Highmountain is the third in series of deluxe collectible figures, and is also the last remaining race to be featured in DC Unlimited's World of Warcraft line of figures. From the picture below, it looks like a lot of work went into the sculpting and painting of the collectible.

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It's standard operating procedure for MMORPG servers to go down periodically for maintenance. Blizzard's World of Warcraft servers aren't exempted from this.

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Apparently, there's been confusion as to when the second qualifying rounds for World of Warcraft's arena tournaments will be taking place. The matter was brought up specifically by player Kobk, who was speaking for a friend. According to Kobk, there seemed to be conflicts with  the dates for the second qualifier, and the date for the tourney's final phase:

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It is curious for some players of World of Warcraft that Blizzard has decided to give Elven Druids both poison spells Cure Poison and Abolish Poison, while leaving Tauren Druids with just the latter one. Clearly, this looks to be a bug.

Blizzard community manager Bornakk was patrolling the forums at that time and clarified the issue with other players.

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Players of World of Warcraft who are in China really have something to look forward to in the future. The9 Limited and Blizzard have decided to expand their agreement to bring The Wrath of the Lich King to mainland China.

This latest expansion is definitely oozing with awesome features. You guys can get to experience the Death Knight, the first Hero class. Aside from this, the level cap has been increased to 80.

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Are you preparing for the upcoming WoW Arena Tournament 2008? The official World of Warcraft armory has a few surprises for us. After last month's season 4 item changes involving the Brutal Gladiator's Greatsword, we have another reported change concerning shoulder armors.

Two new season 4 Brutal Gladiator shoulder armors, Ornamented Spaulders (image above), and Mooncloth Mandle have a higher personal rating requirement now. These two battlegears are now pegged at 2200.

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