Many players are fighting for dominance at the ongoing World of Warcraft Arena Tournament and of course, there are some questions that need to be asked, like "Is the Tournament balanced?" A member of the WoW Forums posted some observations about the variety of the character builds entered in the said tourney.

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Ready Check is a weekly column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, ZA or Sunwell Plateau, everyone can get in on the action and spend thousands of gold on repairs and consumables. This week, a pit lord dies.

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World of Warcraft has two distinctly different types of play: Player versus Environment and Player versus Player. The styles of play are dramatically different and there are few, if any, skills that cross over from one style to the other. WoW started out as a PvE game, adding in PvP content as the player base expanded. And despite the numerous PvP fanbois out there, the real game in WoW will always remain the PvE game.

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Last night the WoW Insider arena team went over to the Arena Tournament server and played 14 matches over a couple hours. We went 8-6 for the evening, a much better number than our 3-11 score the week before. That places us at 11-17, with a team rating of 1435. Not too bad considering we've only played together a handful of times, and some of us are playing completely unknown classes.

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Congratulations to Eldron for submitting the best piece of advice: "Hey everyone! Type /afk list when to see who is afk!" He wins fame, respect, and ooh and ahhhs from crowds of adoring fans!

When I first saw this piece of advice I have to admit I went and tried it right away. I went in AV and typed in /bg, "Man... look at all these AFK people." A few folks responded and agreed with me, annoyed about it. "Type /afk list and report everyone that comes up, please," I say next.

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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.

This week, I finally get around to answering an email from Mattilda:

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Each week, Arcane Brilliance is conjured out of thin air after a three-second cast, and then handed over in stacks of twenty to everyone who cares to have some. Actually, it's usually written over the course of a few hours by a half-asleep father of two after the kids have gone to bed. It may or may not be written while eating Cakesters and listening to a giant, largely embarrassing playlist of 80's music that includes Jan Hammer, Joe Esposito, and the illustrious Ronnie James Dio. So in a way, I suppose, perhaps magic is involved in the creation of this column. How else can you explain my ability to right-align a screenshot or create hyperlinks to Wowhead under those conditions? I'm some kind of sorcerer, that's how.

This week we continue our look at who Mages can kill, and who we can only kill if the other guy spills Red Bull all over his keyboard mid-fight. Just like every other class (except Druids) in this game, there are some good match-ups for Mages, and some incredibly bad ones. Last week we touched on several of these, and this week, we'll go over the rest. To review, according to the unscientific and largely arbitrary rating system I invented for the purposes of this column, it was decided that Warriors were very killable, Hunters were killable with some skill and luck, but Druids and Warlocks were not very killable at all.

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One of the things I sort of miss from my City of Heroes days is the ability to add a description to my character for everyone to see, and having the ability to read their origin stories, too. RP mods such as FlagRSP(now out-of-date) and ImmersionRP work to fill this void, but it isn't quite the same.

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I love this idea that reader Marvin mentioned in the comments the other day (although I wish that he'd tipped us off about it earlier): Leiandra wants to create an official Guildleader Appreciation Day, a day to recognize all the great guildleaders in World of Warcraft and all the other online games. It's simple, too -- all you have to do to observe is just thank your guildleader for their hard work. Until Hallmark gets wind of this, that is, but there's a little while until that happens.

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Blizzard is offering yet another batch of free character moves in between realms for World of Warcraft gamers. This new batch is slightly different from the recent ones they offered though: this one offers a trip to a new Oceanic PvP realm.

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The other day, Kromzul of Burning Blade posted a thread in the official Wrath of the Lich King forum about dungeon design. He asks if instances will be deeper than those in the Burning Crusade, and I agree with most of what he says. Essentially, the epic, sprawling dungeon crawls of old have gone extinct with BC.

Bornakk chimes in to say that The Burning Crusade dungeon design was heavily influenced by player feedback, wishing for more Scarlet Monastery-esque dungeons. I can see that, and to an extent, I agree with that, too. Scarlet Monastery, while shorter and more linear, was also pretty cool.

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Last week, we asked viewers if there could be a happy mix of gameplay and machinima. So far, the only person to chime in was Lex, with this video of a Deadmines run. While admitting that it's not the best example, they feel the music engages viewers and that it's cut together in an organized manner.

We'd have to agree that we're glad they broke free from the metal soundtracks, but the Jackson 5? We're looking for true art. Deadmines BBQ is just a gameplay video with a lot of barn door transitions. There has to be a better example out there than this!

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Well, now it seems that you can't say Blizzard's ignoring the Oceanic community any more. Starting next Monday, April 21, at 12 PM PST, free character transfers will be made available from the following Oceanic PvP realms:

• Barthilas
• Frostmourne
• Jubei'Thos
• Thaurissan


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Don't you love when all the servers are down but a few, and everyone rolls new characters and wanders around the starting areas? Clinker, server unknown, took advantage of weekly maintenance to make a lowbie belfadin on a new server. Unfortunately, he stumbled upon the annual Sin'dorei Women's Swimsuit Competition. Notable terrible names in the screenshot include Myspaceme, Hunnybunn and Nerfthis.

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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While playing with a large group of fellow World of Warcraft players is fun, there are those would prefer a smaller, more tightly-knit group. On Blizzard's forums, WoW player Hatefly wondered if the developer would be adding more 10-man raid dungeons in the future. According to Hatefly, 10-man raids are more fun and easier to get into than their larger counterparts.

Various other Blizzard forum members offered their own ideas and shared their own experience with 10-man raids. For example, Karazhan and Zul'Aman were noted as enjoyable dungeons. One WoW player guessed that Zul'Drak would be the next 10-man dungeon in Wrath of the Lich King.

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I recently posted about how I dropped Mining in order to take up Enchanting to better contribute to my PvP efforts. As of this writing, I've got my Enchanting at an unexciting 245 (update: now at 350). All our banked low-level mats have been used up and I'm hitting a barrier with lacking more than a few Nether Essences. I do have the option of buying them from the Auction House, which will certainly help me skill up faster, but it will also end up breaking my already quite broke(n) back. On the other hand, my wife leveled her Enchanting rather patiently, refusing to rewrite enchantments on gear except for the most inexpensive ones. She would diligently inspect people and their gear in major cities and offer free enchantments. Over time, she acquired enough raw materials and enchanted enough people to hit 375 -- all without spending a single Copper coin.

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If you didn't like the armor designs in World of Warcraft, what would you do? One option is to let Blizzard know that you're looking for cooler-looking armor sets. That's what WoW player Bigstick did, although in a rather..."colorful" manner.

Interestingly opinions of various Blizzard forum members regarding WoW armor were mixed. Quite a few players thought that higher tier armor sets were simply palette-swapped versions of lower tier armor sets. Others thought that the T3 armor sets for some classes looked good while those of the other classes looked either mediocre or terrible.

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Twin Eredars ... Hard mode ?
Vodka killed the Twin Eredars ! Even if it doesnt sound new, they managed to get rid of Sacrolash before killing Grand Warlock Alythess and the result was surprising ... One extra epic loot and 4 Sunmotes ! It looks like Blizzard wanted to be nice with people completing the encounter the hard way.


Reminder : You can find Sunwell Plateau bosses loot table in this post

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Have you ever come across some oddly named World of Warcraft servers lately? You know, the ones named after numbers (E.g. Server 3, Server 4, etc.)? WoW forum member Whyamisofat has, and the player wanted to know what those were all about.

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Eredar Twins encounter: Reverse kill order grants 1 extra epic item + 4 sunmotes

Vodka found out that a reverse kill order (Sacrolash first then Alythess) would make the Eredar Twins drop an extra epic item and 4 more sunmotes. (See screenshot below)

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