The talent calculator was Wowhead's original feature, and it's been a good friend through WoW's development. So it is with a heavy heart that I announce that Wowhead is shutting down the talent calculator.

• Glyphs, like the MMO-Champion calculator has had for a while (but prettier, of course)
• Auto-updating URL - no more need for a "link to this" button
• "Restore" button will reset a calculator if you got there from a link and then altered it

All talents are now updated for patch 3.1, as well. The pet talent calculator has gotten the same treatment as the main talent calculator, with auto-updating URLs and a Restore button.


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• PvP:
  • From: Blackrock, Tichondrius, Emerald Dream, Lethon, Warsong
  • To: Ursin, Ysondre, Nazjatar, Gul'dan
  
  
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We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• The official Ulduar cinematic showed us another glimpse of King Varian Wrynn. Want to know more about him? Check out Lorecrafted's Varian Wrynn character study.
• Speaking of the official cinematic, if you're having trouble with Blizzard's flash player, MMO-Champion has put the video in full on its YouTube channel.
• If you're a healer looking to start Ulduar, World of Matticus has just about everything you could possibly need to be prepared tonight.
• The Death Knights in our audience may be at a loss as to how to spec tonight. You're talent trees have gone through a lot of changes in patch 3.1. Luckily, Death Knight Tactics has some build suggestions for you.
• Too Many Annas uses Dual Spec to try something a little more unusual. If it doesn't work out, you can always change it, right?


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A limited number of realms are back although, despite what’s been reported elsewhere, most remain off line. We did log into two of the servers that are back up and can confirm that patch 3.1 was successfully implemented without any immediate visible bugs. So, here’s the current status report:

-The majority of servers remain down at this time.
-The servers that are up appear to have had patch 3.1 successfully applied.
-At the time of this post’s publication, there has not been an update yet on the WoW alert system regarding current server status.
-We have not yet observed any significant bugs or errors on the playable realms so…
-…The ice stone remains intact.

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The latest update, posted to the Breaking News box a few minutes ago, is that they do not currently have an ETA on when the realms will be up, and they'll give us some more information at about 2 PM PDT, which is in 45 minutes or so.

Update 5:15 p.m. EDT: The realms continue to be down, with the in-game message now telling us that there will be an announcement at 6:00 p.m. EDT letting us all know more information.

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We're listening in to your replies on Twitter about what you're all planning to do when you log into 3.1 for the first time, and an astounding number of people are planning to go for the fishing mount. Yes, despite the fact that everything Blizzard has told us points to the Turtle mount obtained via fishing being extremely rare, lots of players are after it anyway. We've decided, then, to wish you luck. And to help you out, we'll give you a few tips that just might help make the almost assuredly long, boring, clicking grind bearable.

1. Learn to fish (and cook). If you're going to be fishing for the mount, you might as well learn to fish and cook while you do it. The mount itself drops from fishing pools in Northrend, so if all you're doing is going for those, it'll take you a little longer to level than just sitting in Stormwind and leveling fishing (which you can definitely do), but you might as well up your profession while you do it. El's Angling is the guide of choice -- follow it closely and you'll be 450 Fishing/Cooking in no time.

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Our sister site Big Download has mirrored the files necessary to update your game client to patch 3.1. Only the PC version is up at this time, however they're working on getting the Mac version.

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Don't worry, we've got you covered! We've compiled dual-spec guides for each of your classes.

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Lots of the new stuff in today's patch 3.1 update will be in your face -- the class changes won't be missable, and the LFG channel will be full of people trying to head into Ulduar (though who knows how far they'll get). But some of the changes, especially to the user interface, will be a little more hidden -- you'll have to dive into the options to go and find them. Here's a few things we've reported on that you might want to make a note of, if you're interested.

• Arenas now have an option to show Enemy Unit Frames. These will only appear in the Arenas, but you can enable them in the Interface options.
• You will now be able to see when the next Wintergrasp battle is from anywhere in the world -- but only by going out to the world map and then zooming back in to the Wintergrasp map.
• Make sure you hit the map button (usually "M") next time you go into an instance. There are maps in there now.
• There are new "advanced features" for quest tracking now -- but you've got to go into the Interface Options to enable them. If you're already using Questhelper or a similar addon, these will be familiar to you.
• The Equipment Manager isn't in the game yet, but the Color Blind mode and new Battleground and LFG options can all be accessed now.
• Finally, there are a number of new video options available in the Video Options panel, including better shadow and texture details, and even a "Video Mode Ultra" setting. Even Blizzard recommends you run things on the highest setting at your own peril -- lower end computers will have major issues trying to run graphics at the highest setting.


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As of April 20th, however, this will now be prohibited. In Blizzard's words, after that date, "any advertising for a casino is not permitted," and players are encouraged to report advertisers to the GMs. I have to say, I'm not sad to see the casinos go. It's a clever way to make money, yes, but I don't like seeing players advertise repetitively, and of course, the house always wins. It's nice that Blizzard was so responsive about this issue.

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From the “Thank the Heavens” department we have an interesting news item from the official WoW forums that almost slipped under the radar with all the 3.1 hoopla:

In a carefully worded post from Blizzard poster Malkorix, it was announced late yesterday that in-game casino advertisements are “…not welcome at all…” both in-game and on the official forums. This policy takes effect April 20th to allow ample time for casino advertisers to amend their practices and get in-line with Blizzard’s new policy.

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A few caveats:

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Everybody loves achievements, right? ...no, I guess not. Some people like achievements, right? Yes! Patch 3.1 brings a lot of cool stuff for you guys to do as well, so here's all of it in a nice little package for you to pick through. Have fun!

• There's already a few people ready to pick up the Insane title, but we'd like to assume most of you are slightly less insane. Only slightly. For you guys, we have a get to completing Insane in the Membrane.
• As of today, the Black and Plagued Proto-Drakes are gone for good.
• A batch of brand new achievements have been added to the Noblegarden event, which has been extended to a week and will begin on April 26th. Note that you will need these for What a Long, Strange Trip Its Been.
• We've posted an early version of Ulduar's achievements, too!
• Chef de Cuisine is getting a bit easier for Alliance players. They can get their hands on Dig Rat Stew on their own now!
• In exchange, Lil' Game Hunter is becoming easier for the Horde. Enjoy your Sprite Darters and Westfall Chickens!
• The Argent Tournament has a load of its own achievements as well.


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Today's maintenance period has just been extended an extra two hours according to Datth, one of Blizzard's Tech Support posters. He specifies that the reason for the extension is unrelated to the Battle.net login server 'issue' that's being discussed heavily on the forums. What the reason for the extension is, we don't really know, but I think we all expected it.

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It's patch day, of course, and people are having plenty of troubles with upgrading their clients to the latest 3.1 version. But worry not -- most of the issues we're seeing, while relatively widespread, should be fixed by the time the realms come back online. Here's a few tips to help you get through the time of trouble.

Help! My patch isn't downloading? It's stuck at 68%/73%/xx%!
It probably is downloading -- be patient and let it run. Blizzard uses a Bittorrent-based system to distribute the game's patches through the official client, and those systems depend not just on Blizzard and their ability to distribute the patch, but also how much of the patch all of your peers have. If everyone around you has xx%, that's all you'll get for now. But an hour from now, someone will have spread the full patch around, and then you'll pick it up no problem. Patience is a virtue, and until the realms come back up, you can't play anyway.

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The official 3.1 patch notes for the live realms states that the equipment manager is now active. The patch preview website that went live says it isn't, and a blue post from a couple weeks ago was the first announcement that it won't be going live in patch 3.1 yet.

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/Feign Surprise.

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So the big day is finally upon us. As we’ve mentioned many times here at WoWenomics, the most vital tool for successful investing is reliable information. To this end, we’d like to start off by pointing out patch 3.1 details that have recently been confirmed vs. what is still speculation or otherwise unclear. Immediately following this post, we will put up a comprehensive guide to profiting from the new content so be sure to check back in a few hours.

Facts (confirmed information):

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Now it has been brought to my attention (thanks, nadewow) that Mundocani is both continuing development on Outfitter and returning it to public distribution (i.e. Curse and WoW Interface). His stated reasoning for this latest move is that "Blizzard isn't going to respond to the concerns raised by the community, which puts things at a stalemate," and he doesn't want to punish users for what he sees as Blizzard's mistakes.

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Warning: Not safe for work! While it's all in a good fun, there's definitely cursing and loud, riotous music.

This is the new short video from Myndflame, titled Theory of a Death Knight. Rumor has it that the creator went to herculean effort to get the video published. While I hate to see someone go to that kind of pain, I do have to say that it was worth it. "Theory" is one of those rare unique pieces that show why Clint is a stand-apart machinimator.

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Patch days bring about major game changing news, and the WoW Insider crew is hard at work to bring you the very latest.

As we gotten the news in we've been tweeting about it left and right, and we'll continue to do this throughout the day. We're also responding to as many questions via tweets as we can.

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WoW Insider has been on fire the past few months with patch 3.1 information. We've published nearly 400 articles on various aspects of the patch, more than any other patch we've covered.

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It's official! Patch 3.1 is coming to the live realms today and if you're one of many left dizzy after weeks of changes, bug fixes, nerfs, buffs, stealth nerfs, re-buffs, undocumented changes, and redocumented changes -- WoW Insider is here to help. Obviously things like dual specs and 30 minute hearthstone cooldowns will help us all, but chances are you want to know exactly what's going to be different with your class when you log on after today's maintenance. Here's everything that's been happening for every class, in a single place for your reading convenience...
Death Knights

• Initial Patch 3.1 change for Death Knights
  
• Feb. 24th PTR changes for Death Knights
  
• Ghostcrawler defends Death Knight Howling Blast nerf
• Lichborne: Dual Wielding and tanking on the patch 3.1 PTR
• Lichborne: It's been one week (of 3.1)
• Patch 3.1 PTR build 9658 Death Knight changes
• Lichborne: More emergent builds on the 3.1 PTR
  
• Lichborne: The rise of Blood in 3.1
• Lichborne: Dual specs for Death Knights
• Lichborne: Top Death Knight DPS builds and patch 3.1


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One of the big features coming in today's patch is the Argent Tournament, and with it comes a whole load of daily quests. Like we've done with Patch 2.4 and Wrath of the Lich King's release, we've been working on a series of guides to all of the new dailies. We aren't finished (there are a lot of quests), but we've been slowly trickling out guides over the last week or so. We've already had a few requests to get the guides we've done already gathered into one place, so we shall do just that.

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Patch 3.1 has been released!

Because we are big believers that time is money, we would like to advise our readers to start downloading patch 3.1 right now. Most players can do so by simply attempting to launch the game at which point the download/install application from Blizzard will launch and start the process.

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Azeroth must have some incredibly complicated weather patterns. How else would we get the stark contrasts found between neighboring zones? Feralas, a forested land, is found between the dull deserts of Desolace and Thousand Needles. The tropical lushness of Stranglethorn Vale doesn't seem to have spread to the neighboring fields of Westfall. And what possible justification is there for Dun Morogh, a snowy southern zone surrounded entirely by temperate plains and heat-induced blast craters? Unless it's just nuclear fallout from Gnomeregan.

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One of the most suprising successes of a franchise which includes the Trading Card Game, figures, books and even Mountain Dew is actually the World of Warcraft manga published by TOKYOPOP. Given that the game has actually been shaped by the characters and lore introduced in the manga (and vice versa), I decided it was high time we sat down with series editor Troy Lewter and writer Dan Jolley.

We're posting Troy's interview today while the interview with Dan Jolley (who has penned the upcoming Thassarian-centric Warcraft: Death Knight manga) will follow tomorrow.

WoW Insider: So Troy, how did you get involved with the Warcraft line of manga?

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We've talked a whole lot about Ulduar in the last few months, and a lot of great Ulduar-related resources have cropped up. So you don't need to dig through our entire site to find what you're looking for this fine Tuesday morning, I've tried to collect the most useful pieces of our current Ulduar content into one nice list for you. Enjoy!

• Ulduar Mania kicked off with this preview of Ulduar from the official EU community site.
• And then this video!
• You can listen to this song by Summergale and Cranius titled 'Ulduar' while you read this insanely long list!
• To be sure you'll never be lost in Ulduar, we've covered a few sites with maps of the zone.
• Check out an early iteration of the Ulduar achievements. Most of them have remained the same, but note that some of the numbers in the post were placeholders and have since been updated.


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The idea is that we will now use the official tools provided by those sites: Curse Client from Curse, and an updater that is still in the works for WoW Interface. Unfortunately, the Curse Client for Mac is a work of pure evil uses a lot of obtrusive and non-standard interface elements, as well as being pretty unstable, so I'm not a huge fan of it; I'm not sure how the Windows version stacks up. It also didn't find about half of my addons, including some that I know are on the Curse site, like ClearFont2.

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The contest we've been alluding to the last couple of weeks is finally here: This is your chance to win a copy of Arthas: Rise of the Lich King through WoW Insider, courtesy of Simon and Schuster.

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It's kind of sad and funny that the best-designed weapons in Patch 3.1 aren't going to come from Ulduar but from the cool but overshadowed Argent Tournament. As great as the Tier 8 armor designs are, most of the Ulduar weapons just aren't on par, with the awesomely-named Voldrethar, Dark Blade of Oblivion looking like something you'd stick into an hors d'oeuvre sooner than you would stick it into an opponent. Remember Ashkandi, Greatsword of the Brotherhood? Or Zin'rokh, Destroyer of Worlds? The new 2-handed sword from Ulduar follows that great naming tradition but minus the visual badassery.

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It's been a long time coming, but Patch 3.1 Secrets of Ulduar has arrived and with it comes a long list of shiny, shiny features. Ready for new content? It's got Ulduar, the prison for Yogg-Saron and his floating brain of death, plus more epic loot than all of The Burning Crusade raids. It comes in both 10-man and 25-man versions, and each boss has a Hard Mode for you crazy kids trying to get your hands on the new Legendary healing mace.

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One of the biggest new features in today's patch 3.1 is dual spec capabilities. It's been through many iterations on the PTR, and there's a lot of information floating around (check out our full guide to dual specs), but here's the abbreviated version.

Go see your class trainer. Bring 1,000g and be at least level 40. Make sure the glyphs you have on right now are the ones you want to be associated with your primary talent spec.

Ask your trainer nicely for dual-spec capabilities, and pay that 1,000g.

All your talents are now reset, and you now have access to a second set of them. Set up your talents as you wish, buy new skills as required, and add glyphs to your second spec.

Congratulations! You may now switch specs any time you're out of combat (except in arenas). The video above shows the process of switching specs; doing so also switches your action bars and your glyphs (you store a separate set of glyphs for each spec). Switching specs does not require a Lexicon of Power. In fact, Lexicons of Power are not required for anything any more, not even glyphing. Each of your two sets of talents can be reset just like you're used to resetting talents; resetting one does not disturb the other. Happy talenting!

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People never believe me when I say the Horde is my favorite of the two factions and that most of my characters are only Alliance because that is the faction my friends play. Of course, this evening, it's easy to see why I sometimes have a hard time convincing them of this fact, as I have spent the last few hours gushing about King Varian Wrynn to anyone who will listen and even a few people who won't. Seriously, if you are in a place that allows the streaming of video and sound, you should watch the new Ulduar trailer. Varian is so amazing, I almost needed a change of pants after I finished watching.

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Now that we have official patch notes for patch 3.1, I thought I'd take a look and see what changed between the last PTR notes and today. And the answer is: not much. Only eight new/changed lines, and nothing that I'd call major. But you may disagree, dear reader, and so I'll list everything I found right here.

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We've been churning out reams of text on Secrets of Ulduar going live later today, but who doesn't love some shiny pictures to go with it. Just pick your favorite one and pretend you're there until the servers come back up. You can even get on the phone with your guildmate and pretend you're on Vent arguing about how the Hunter just ninja'd the new legendary healing mace.

Gallery: Tier 8 Armor

Gallery: Patch 3.1 Dual Spec walkthrough

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The blues have confirmed that patch 3.1 will be released tomorrow. Zarhym said as much in a post a few moments ago.

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Here we are ladies and gentleman, the official patch notes for the live version of patch 3.1. Features of this patch include:

• Dual Specs
• Ulduar
• Argent Tournament
• Major Class Changes
• Swimming Mounts
• New Inscriptions

A few reminders about these notes. First, they were obtained from the official patch files. Secondly, the notes are subject to change at the whim of Blizzard. If they do, you'll be able to find the changes here. Third, not everything on the PTR makes it into the live patch – and not everything in the live patch was on the PTR.

The full notes are after the break: Part I and Part II.

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As a follow-up to yesterday’s post regarding the 3.1 crafting list from WoR, we wanted to point out another fantastic 3.1 WoW professions tool that works nicely with the resource from WoR: The Reagents Changes List from MMO-Champion.

Sorted by profession, this tool allows crafters to see what source materials will be changing with the implementation of patch 3.1. Take a look at the tab for your chosen profession and make note of items that you may now need (or, as in most cases, no longer need) to craft some of your most popular items.

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