I love hotfixes. They're like patches you don't have to wait for. Just posted by Daelo, WoW's lead encounter designer (who I've been seeing a lot of lately, but don't remember seeing much before) is a brief account of hotfixes to Archimonde and the Eredar Twins. For Archie:

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I've been farming a lot of ghost mushrooms and gromsblood lately in order to make Demonslaying Elixirs. My guild's farming trash in Sunwell Plateau at the moment and has taken a few half-hearted swings at Kalecgos, all of which ended in much hollering and arguing and waving of hands in the air. But despite the fact that Big Blue is likely to ride our collective ass for weeks, I like to think of myself as a long-term planner with a gimlet eye on Brutallus. So, a-farming I go.

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Ever since gamers started running Karazhan in Blizzard's World of Warcraft, quite a number of them have been requesting that its cooldown be lowered by a couple of days. Unfortunately, this won't be the case as  Community  Manager Slorkuz explained.

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Vivendi gave World of Warcraft gamers a pleasant surprise as it revealed the contents of its earning statements for 2008. The statement released by the company hinted that the release date of the upcoming WoW expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, should be expected by the second half of 2008.

If you don't believe us, here's an excerpt taken from the earning statement unveiled by Vivendi:

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We've covered the IBM/Seriosity study before -- that's the one that said players who are able to organize and lead guilds can use those same skills to succeed in the workplace. Just recently, Computerworld sat down to chat with Seriosity co-founder Byron Reeves, who's since used his research to actually develop ways for companies to use MMO-style gameplay in the workplace, including creating a currency system to develop and manage interactions between employees.

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Yesterday my guild was getting ready for our nightly foray into the Black Temple (we downed the first five bosses in 3 ½ hours, not too bad). Out of the blue, a member who has been having some "issues" as of late decided it was high time to leave the guild. And he didn't just stealth gquit, he went out in style.

Instead of being adult about it, which everyone in my guild is, he posted a long winded and rambling message to the guild and then left. His tantrum was quite good, one of the most epic I've seen. But the epicness of his lack of class wasn't the best part. The best part was that he had enough foresight to do it all with a macro. So after a bunch of us got done laughing about him leaving on ventrilo I thought to myself, "Self, I should post this on WoW Insider tomorrow. After all, a gquit macro sounds like a good idea!"

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As you may have heard the other day, our Twitter account is up and running, and one of the most vocal participants so far has been our new Priest blogger, Matticus from World of Matticus. The other day, he posted a question on the Twitter account that he'd also asked people on his own blog: what makes an encounter epic?

The answers are all pretty good (I've put them all behind the break -- thanks, Twitterers!). From what most people said, lore and story play a huge part in making a fight feel epic, and not just the story of the game, but the story of the guild playing as well -- when your guild almost wipes, and pulls off a great kill, that's an epic battle whether it's in Karazhan or in Sunwell Plateau. Challenge also helps -- people raid to be pushed to the edge of their endgame abilities, and when a well-tuned fight does that, it's one of the best experiences in the game.

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var digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/WoW_Wrath_of_the_Lich_King_to_be_released_2nd_half_of_2008'; Vivendi earning statements announced today hint that Wrath of the Lich King is expected to be released the second half of 2008. This would also fit into dates that we've seen on sites like Amazon and Gamestop.

This is also significant in that it's the first time an official confirmation of a release time frame has come out. And being that this is the data sent to Vivendi investors, it comes with a good bit of clout.

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It's been almost a full year since I last saw this brought up, and we still haven't seen anything from Blizzard on it. Eric over on WoW LJ brings up the issue of tracking alts within a guild. As we found out last time, most people just use guild notes (or helpful addons) to keep track of whose alt is whose inside a guild, and it works OK -- assuming people are up front about when they're logging in on another toon.

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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, brings you some choice tidbits of knowledge on level 70 consumables for the beary furry crowd.

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Before I start this post, I should warn you that every single post we do about the size of something ingame must, by contractual obligations, contain a risqué double entendre somewhere within. Be warned.

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You might remember yesterday that we reported on the Wall Street Journal's report on the canceling of the Dell XPS line, which includes the World of Warcraft laptop. It seems that the Wall Street Journal got it wrong, according to Dell spokeswoman Anne B. Camden, speaking via Dell's official blog.

She took issue with almost every aspect of the Wall Street Journal's report, saying that both Alienware and the XPS line are hardly in trouble, and are known for excellence and have gained many awards and accolades, and that Dell was dedicated to both. In fact, she specifically praised the XPS M1730, which is the base for the World of Warcraft laptop.

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As usual with WoW patches, patch 2.4.2 includes a couple of wild bugs. My personal favorites(and by favorites I mean I absolutely hate them) are the bugs(changes?) to the Archimonde encounter.

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The small handful of guilds worldwide that have killed M'uru thus far are going to have an achievement therein that nobody else can touch. As of yesterday's patch 2.4.2 (today on the European realms), Blizzard has made the following change to the encounter:

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Since you guys couldn't get enough of Gnomechewer, I'm featuring a suggestion by one of our commenters. If you can remember the 90s, a satire film, Last Action Hero, came out, and it starred California's governor, Arnold Schwarzenegger. What was supposed to be a summer blockbuster has ended up the butt of jokes for 15 years. However, the dialogue and action worked much better in Last Action Crusader. Keep in mind that this machinima is seven months old.

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Your raid party's spell-casters having trouble trying to do their work during the M'uru boss battle in World of Warcraft's Sunwell Plateau? If they are, then it will probably have something to do with this Naaru's nasty habit of cancelling your spells.

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Twice a week, our writers will tell you more about themselves, and let you get to know them and the characters they play a little better. Click here to read more About the Bloggers.

What do you do for WoW Insider?

Currently I contribute the Ready Check column, which aims to cover raid bosses and raiding issues from an endgame perspective. Some of you may recognise my name from the mists of time, however -- I used to be a blogger for Joystiq back when they decided a spinoff WoW site would be a funky idea. Before I knew it I was site lead, until RL called me away. But like a bad penny, I'm back!

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"Hey, Garth?"

"Yeah, Wayne?"

"What do you think of when you look at the sky? Do you wonder if that big pink thing is a whole different galaxy out there, looking back at us? And when they look back at us, what color do you think we are?"

"Actually, Wayne, I don't think much of anything anymore, since you stabbed me in the back and cannibalized my flesh, leaving me to decay on this rock in Nagrand."

"Yeah, you're my best friend too, Garth. Let's get you back in your grave before it rains."

(Thanks to Bearhuggy of <Natures Fury> on Stormreaver for the pic, and an honorable mention to CA's very similar submission.)

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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As some of the players here will recall, World of Warcraft's public realms recently received its much-awaited patch 2.4.2. Now, if you're among the guys who's busily reading over the patch note changes, you might want to listen in.

We've picked up a couple of the currently undocumented changes that for WoW's new patch, gathered from player reports from the WoW forums. For one, it appears that the new main-hand to one-hand weapon classification won't be affecting caster weapons.

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We are just about to hit full steam on the convention season, and Blizzard isn't taking any time off this year. Not only did we hear about BlizzCon on Monday, but we already knew that WWI was going to happen in Paris, and then learned that Rob Pardo would be visiting the Paris GDC. And while Blizzard may not be officially a presence at other cons this summer, their presence is going to be felt for sure -- PAX, GenCon, or DragonCon, whereever there are gamers together, there is WoW.

So where are you going to be? Planning on visiting any cons this year? I won't say it's hassle-free -- the crowds, lines, and just plain costs of these things tend to make me avoid them, especially right after I've been to visit one. But then again, every year around this time I start to get excited about maybe going to them again, and while I have no idea what my plans are right now, I can tell you for sure that WoW Insider will have a presence at all kinds of conventions this year.

What about you?

The patch 2.4.2 deployment is behind us, it's time to talk about everything that happened since the beginning of the week.

2.4.2 Undocumented changes
The patch 2.4.2 had a few undocumented changes, newest additions from the Live patch have been added to the top of each category. This post will probably be updated multiple times today

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Menzoberranzan on Tichondrious-H decided recently that after a spat of drama, they were going to go on hiatus until Wrath, so their GL cooked up this video to show off some of the highlights of the guild. Most of it is just a slideshow of screenshots (so we're using it as the header shot this week), but jump up to 7:19, because there's some funny kids dancing.

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It seems to be an unfortunate reality of WoW, if not MMORPGs in general: When a new patch goes live, more often than not, it's going to be a bit rocky on the servers for a while. Patch 2.4.2 is no exception, Many servers are having trouble staying up, including most of the Ruin Battlegroup, which according to a few our tipsters has been having more than its share of trouble lately. Blue Poster Vrakthis has assured posters on the Customer Service Forum that the Realm issues are being looked into, but so far, there does not seem to be a solid reason for the downtime other than, hey, it's patch day!

EDIT: It has now been confirmed that the downtimes were intentional for the purpose of emergency maintenance. The downtime should be minimal.


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