There'll be some good ol' sever maintenance for us all tomorrow, lasting from 5:00 a.m. PDT / 8:00 a.m. EDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT / 1:00 p.m. EDT.

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There's an additional list of in-game fixes released tonight by Bornakk. The fixes have been coming less and less over the past week, and that's reflected in the fact the game's stability has vastly improved since patch 3.1 dropped (at least for most).

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Blizzplanet has a video they've been saving from the New York Comic Con a little while back. This time, they chat with Walter and Louise Simonson, part of the team behind the World of Warcraft comic, which at the time, had just re-introduced Garona Halforcen, the half-orc assassin who is likely about to make a long-awaited appearance in the MMO world of Azeroth. The couple say that while they can't tell us much, Garona fans have some cool stuff to look forward to, as we're going to learn more about both her "past" and "future." There are some other little lore tidbits in the interview as well, including what's up with Varian Wrynn and his counterpart, Lo'gosh. And there's good news for fans of the Horde -- while the comic book has so far had an Alliance lead character, Blizzard is setting up new things for the Horde as well.

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We've heard about suggestions of vanilla servers before (and Blizzard has flatly stated that they have no plans for them), but here's a new twist: Nomnom on Korgath says that Blizzard should finally, once and for all, abandon the old world. He says that leveling from 1-60 is a pain, even with the changes and recruit-a-friend (and on that, I agree -- my Paladin is level 50 and staying there, because leveling is boring), and that Blizzard should just start all new characters at level 55, especially if you've already got a 70+ character. They already did it with Death Knights, and those have worked their way into the endgame just fine.

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There were also normal-mode tweaks to Auriya, Thorim, and Freya, and some of the trash (Conservatory, Vezax, Sappers) was beat up a little bit. The Ulduar nerf parade may have slowed down over the weekend, but it's back in force for Monday. I'm starting to feel a little sorry for all the bosses, seeing their power slowly drained away.

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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.

• Our sister site Massively asks, "What's in a name?"
• You have a few days left to get your Children's Week achievements taken care of, and Herding Cats has a few tips for everyone's bane: School of Hard Knocks.
• Less QQ, More Pewpew has continued their Ulduar video series with their latest addition, Mimiron. You can watch it at the top of this post, or over on their site!
• World of Matticus's Lodur takes a very close look at the transition into becoming a raid leader.


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Blood Pact is a weekly column here at WoW Insider, where Nick Whelan delves into the darkest corner of the Slaughtered Lamb Inn, to take a peek at Warlocks and what they do.

I've been thinking for awhile now that I'd like to approach Blood Pact a bit differently. Thus far the bulk of my posts have focused on playing a Warlock at level 80. Granted, a casual Warlock at 80, but still, my aim has been towards max level players. Aside from the obvious problem that raises of excluding lower level 'locks, this approach pointlessly limits my available subject matter. And that's just plain silly. So, since I still haven't wriggled my way into a new raid group, I think this is a good opportunity to delve into some of the topics I've been ignoring, with the goal of writing a more balanced column in the future.

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Season 3 of The Guild has been given the green light via sponsorship from Microsoft and Sprint. According to the Hollywood Reporter, production is anticipated to begin in June, with a sneak peak of season three happening at the San Diego Comic-Con in July.

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We've posted about both the Bejeweled and the Peggle addons here lots -- we're big fans of PopCap releasing free versions of their games for us to play in Azeroth. But all might not be well in addon land -- a few authors have come to us to point out that PopCap's addons actually contain obfuscated code in them. Obfuscation is a little hard to define -- it's a coding technique that makes code difficult to be read by other programmers, either for purposes of compression or to deliberately hide the code's function or purpose from anyone reading it. Obfuscation is strictly prohibited by Blizzard's addon policy, and so when addon authors dived into PopCap's code and found it obfuscated, they were concerned that PopCap is dodging Blizzard's rules.

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Ulduar Tuning Tweaks - 05/04/09
Quote from: Valnoth (Source)Ulduar Tuning Tweaks 05/04/09

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In an unusual move, Blizzard has spelled out exactly how the proc on Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings works. There are probably one or two of you who consider it a spoiler, so I'll put it after the cut.

• There is a 10% chance whenever healing is done by one of your HoTs or direct heals for you to gain a buff called Blessing of Ancient Kings for 15 seconds. This has a 45 second internal cooldown. Heals that are entirely overheal – such as HoTs ticking on a full-health target – do not have a chance to proc the Blessing.
  
• The Blessing causes all of your heals (for the 15 seconds that the buff is up) to put a shield on anyone you heal absorbing 15% of the amount healed for 8 seconds.
• This shield stacks with itself, will proc from HoT ticks that occur after you gain the Blessing, and includes overhealing - if I have the Blessing up and hit someone with a 13k Greater Heal, of which 10k is overhealing, they get a shield for (13k * 0.15) = 1950 damage.
  
• There is a cap of 20,000 on the shield effect.

If all of this is confusing you, go check out the examples on Bornakk's post, which are very helpful.

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It's a new month and the new brew is here! May's Brew of the Month is a very simple Springtime Stout with a familiar side effect. When you drink one of your drinks, you have a chance to proc the buff called 'Flower Child.' The buff only lasts ten seconds or so, and as you run around with the buff, flowers pop up underfoot. Herbalists, you've seen something like this before.

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Update - Updated the post with a few more information from Ghostcrawler

Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings
The proc on Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings has been clarified by Bornakk.

• Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings dedicated page.

Quote from: Bornakk (Source)We have received many questions about how the proc works on Val’anyr, the Hammer of the Ancient Kings. While we originally intended for this effect to be a mystery, we realize that guilds now know what the tooltip on the proc says without necessarily knowing the details on how it works. This leads to situations where a healer may not know if assembling the hammer is worth it for them (hint: it is), and perhaps even worse, a misinformed leader may not think you deserve the hammer (hint: you do).

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

PUG players seem to be everywhere these days. For guilds that can't field a full 25, PUGs are running Naxxramas and Obsidian Sanctum and even the Eye of Eternity alongside you. They're practically half the raid in your Vault of Archavon runs. They help your 10-player raid take out Heroic Flame Leviathan for some quick, juicy iLevel 226 loot. If Blizzard keeps nerfing Ulduar, pretty soon they'll be looting Keepers' chests, too.

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We've received a lot of tips in the past few minutes, and now it's official: the Shadowburn battlegroup is down for emergency maintenance. The realms are estimated to return in two hours, around 3:30 EST, but we'll keep you posted if we hear anything new.

What are you guys going to do in the mean time? I hear there's a good WoW blog around here somewhere that you might enjoy browsing through.

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If you're a machinima regular, you're probably familiar with Myndflame. The name can refer to the machinima website, where a wide and varied group of authors gather to share their work, comment on one another's pieces, and generally do the hang-out thing. Or, the name can refer to a specific set of artists, who put together pieces like Illegal Danish. That group's got a lot going on.

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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

On this Monday morning I have come to realize one important thing: a picture is worth a thousand words.

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Wello posted his Van Helsing Trailer over on Myndflame, with some commentary that I found pretty interesting. First, it's his fourth video, and the one he feels best about. More importantly, Wello said that he'd searched far and wide for anyone else who'd already created a Van Helsing trailer. He found none, so immediately made one himself. He considered it his "time to shine."

It's easy to forget that the creation of machinima is usually sourced in an author's passion for the subject. Okay, so while Hugh Jackman rocking a crossbow and funny hat might not be humanity's key pathos, it's something for which Wello has a lot of love. (Hell, maybe Hugh Jackman is a strong enough collective obsession, anyway, given what opened this weekend.) Machinimators don't make a bunch of money off their work, it's entirely a labor or love.

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Here's our podcast from last week -- Lesley Smith joined Turpster, Patrick Beja of How I WoW and I to chat about the Martin Fury controversy, how Children's Week and Noblegarden are going on the live realms, and what we've been up to lately in the World of Warcraft. And as usual we answered your email, including sharing ideas for our upcoming video show (we're planning on doing it on May 23rd, so stay tuned for that), how to transfer away from a guild if you happen to be a guildleader, and both why Blizzard canceled WWI, and when BlizzCon tickets might go on sale.

We also talked about the ongoing Children's Week Charity Auction -- bidding has slowed down a bit over the weekend, so if you're interested in helping out kids in hospitals by donating some money to buy them videogames, go on over to the auction page and find something to bid on. All the money raised goes directly to Child's Play, so get your bids in now while you can.

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Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them 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!

Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word "Azeroth" in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing -- use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, double-mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

Gallery: Around Azeroth

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Starting to tank is scary. During BC I leveled from 40 through 69 as a Balance Druid, and then discovered that a tank couldn't be pugged for love or money once you hit the later portion of Outland on my realm. I'd picked up some feral gear along the way and decided to give tanking a shot, but then spent my first afternoon in the trenches being a nervous wreck after losing aggro to impatient DPS, aggroing extra mobs by charging into pulls instead of LOSing them, and taking a ridiculous amount of damage. The feeling of being constantly judged by your group members isn't a pleasant sensation, but more maddening was the knowledge that certain things beyond your control -- mob stuns, lazy or trigger-happy DPS, an inattentive healer, or something as simple as a missed Mangle -- could make you look worse than you actually were.

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It's Monday morning at eight o'clock in the ae-em. Do you know where your kids are?

Mine is safely wrapped up next to me sitting at the inn off the bank in Dalaran.

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Iron Council Hard Mode EU First Kill
Silent (EU-Illidan) defeated the Iron Council in hard mode last night, the Hall of Fame has been updated.


Patch 3.1.2 - Battle-Bots
Patch 3.1.2 will include a new mini-pet, the Battle-Bot. We don't have many details on these bots for the moment but it looks like they will have a couple of abilities and will use multiple types of fuel.

• Battle-Bot - Right Click to summon and dismiss your Battle-Bot
• Blue Battle Fuel - Fill up your Battle-Bot with blue fuel.
• Red Battle Fuel - Fill up your Battle-Bot with red fuel.

Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staffClass changes in future patches
All I meant was that 3.2's list of class changes will probably be much smaller than 3.1. We will still make class changes. I was speaking more to those players who feel like they can't even get a feel for how things work because they changed in 3.0, maybe even 3.09 and 3.1. (Source)

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Funny Money is a weekly column published at the end of the week with the intent to have a little fun with the world of finance. Every weekend we’ll bring you a financial quote, a song relating to money, something interesting from the real world of business and a quick WoW gold making tip. Read on and have some fun…

Money Quote

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This installment of All the World's a Stage is the thirty-first in a series of roleplaying guides in which we find out all the background information you need to roleplay a particular race or class (or profession!) well, without embarrassing yourself.

Enchanting cries out to be roleplayed. It could be a kind of magician's engineering, or a more refined cousin of alchemy. Although you could certainly play an enchanter as another sort of magical mad-scientist, the profession actually lends itself well to a more gentlemanly (and sane) approach, where experiments are not so much about creating some sort of autonomous monster or mind-controling love potion of serene bliss, but rather altering the nature of things to do what they never would have done previously.

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