The World of Warcraft Trading Card game has released its latest expansion, but it's a little bit different than what's come before. It's called Arena Grand Melee, and it actually changes the gameplay of the TCG just a little bit, including some very different mechanics than those players have seen before. For instance, there's a card called "For the Fallen" that will grant additional cards to players when they act out their melee strikes in real-life. Another card called "Steamwheedle Casino" has players playing a quick game of Blackjack with their WoW TCG cards to win an extra card. Arena Grand Melee sounds it puts a very strange twist on the current TCG game.

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We noted an error earlier this evening which was causing the Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone to be reset prematurely. Since ending epic battles early is a bad thing, Blizzard has gone ahead and "shut off Wintergrasp" completely for the time being.

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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.

• HolyPaladin.net takes a good look at the balance between WoW and life and how to find it.
• The Rawrcast spoke with Curse's ckknight on the WoW Matrix controversy, Curse's premium client, and much more this weekend. Give it a listen!
• The Hearthstone Tavern has put out the first edition of their brand new World of Warcraft podcast focusing on RP and lore. This week they discuss Arthas: Rise of the Lich King and how it can bolster your own roleplay.
• The Twisted Nether Blogcast has posted episode number 44, this time with Dezdemone from Will Tank For Healz.
• Can't afford to go to BlizzCon? No worries, Spooncraft's got your backs. Well, the back of one of you. Just one back. They're running a contest to design a Spooncraft t-shirt, and the lucky Grand Prize winner gets a BlizzCon ticket, a free hotel stay, and $500 towards their airfare. Pretty sweet? Yeah, pretty sweet.


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Apparently if you want to authenticate your game tonight, you'll be out of luck. At least for the time being.

Authentication? Logging in? Who needs that?

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15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

Let's jump right in – because appropriately enough, that's the modus operandi of this week's profile subject, blogger/cartoonist/gag writer/self-proclaimed "older" player/sci-fi writer John Zakour. With a WoW column at Pink Raygun, a daily web comic with some 50,000 readers, a 2180-rated Mage and a steady stream of published sci-fi books, Zakour keeps the one-liners flowing.

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We're getting tons of reports in of Wintergrasp behaving a bit oddly today, and I can confirm them to be true on my home server of Cenarion Circle. Wintergrasp battles are lasting, at most, 5-10 minutes with no more than 10 minutes between battles. Good for farming Marks of Honor, not so good for trying to kill Archavon and/or Emalon.

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Update - Added Recent In-Game Fixes 05/19 and Wintergrasp Temporarily Disabled

Wintergrasp Temporarily Disabled
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)We have shut off Wintergrasp on all realms while we investigate an issue which caused the games to reset prematurely. Thank you for your patience, and we will re-activate Wintergrasp once the issue has been resolved.
Recent In Game Fixes - 05/19
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)05/19

• Innervate now properly restores the correct amount of mana to Shapeshifted targets that do not have a mana bar active.
• Thrust and Shield-Break attacks in the Argent Tournament are correctly being mitigated by the number of Defends that are active on the target.
• The Supercharged ability on Storm Tempered Keepers near Auriaya will no longer increase the damage of Storm Wave.
• Some of the trash mob packs have been removed in the areas leading to Ignis the Furnace Master and Freya.
• In the tunnel leading to Mimiron, the Clockwork Sapper’s Ice Turret's ability, Ice Nova, now does considerably less damage in both difficulty modes.
• In the Antechamber leading to the Assembly of Iron, the Rune Etched Sentry's ability, Flaming Rune, does considerably less damage over time in both difficulty modes.
• The Molten Colossus near Ignis the Furnace Master will no longer cast Unquenchable Flames.
• Chamber Overseer's Staggering Roar does consider.
• Some issues were fixed and Algalon the Observer should now properly reset every time a raid wipes.
• The hit point increasing hard mode ability for XT-002 Deconstructor has been reduced to 50% in the 10 player Normal setting, and 60% in the 25 player Heroic setting. The corresponding damage increase for XT-002 has also been reduced to 15%. Life Sparks also have half of their previous hit point values.
• The engineering boot enchant, Nitro Boosts, will no longer be usable in rated or skirmish arena matches.
• The duration of Kologarn's Crunch Armor effect has been greatly reduced in normal difficulty. This change negates the explicit need to tank swap Kologarn.
• Thorim's Chain Lightning will no longer affect more than 8 targets in normal and heroic difficulty.
• General Vezax now does 10% less melee damage in normal difficulty.

Ulduar Tuning (May 19 2009)
Quote from: Daelo (Source)The following are a list of changes that have been hotfixed to 3.1.2 or are in the process of being hotfixed. All changes are to both 10 and 25 player versions of the instance, unless specifically noted.

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Patch 3.1.2 has added another entry into our list of things that are completely freaking adorable today. We didn't notice this on the PTR for some reason (likely because everyone was busy playing premades that lacked turtles) but jumping in place on a Sea Turtle does something really quite cool. Your turtle hides in his shell.

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Those who participated in this year's official arena tournament have been not-so-patiently awaiting their reward for playing 200 arena matches in the preliminary rounds on the tournament realm. It's been quite awhile since players expected to get their hands on Murkimus, but Blizzard representatives have been giving a mid-May estimate that proved true today.

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The devs have been promising some buffs to warrior DPS for a while, but there haven't been any specifics. Today is no change. There are "buffs planned" for Arms and Fury, but there are no details announced yet. Ghostcrawler does mention that "there is almost no chance of a Titan's Grip change at any time in the near future," so don't hold your breath about that. My guess would be they're simply tired of making changes to that talent.

Our Resources page has long been a favorite of readers. It functions as a single hub wherein visitors can find links to all of their favorite WoW finance sites and game resources. Over the past few months we’ve been tracking the page’s usage statistics and determining how best to serve the community.

We are pleased to announce that we have recently redesigned the page to deliver more of what you love, and removal of less popular features. We’ve removed sites that no longer met our standards of Free, Fresh and Relevant (as described on the Resources page) and have introduced many new links in our most popular categories- all organized with a new grouping system.

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The amazing Breanni of WarcraftPets.com, once loved so much by Blizzard that he got immortalized in the game, has apparently gotten another of Blizzard's C&Ds. First, we saw iPhone apps pulled off of the App Store with what seemed like legal action, and then we heard that webcomic Shakes and Fidget was contacted by Blizzard legal, and now Breanni has pulled down his merchandise store, as well as posted a "formal apology" to Blizzard. Breanni doesn't say exactly what happened, but he says that he "became aware" that what he was selling was violating Blizzard's trademark policy, and calls the store a "lapse in judgment," and says that he hopes to "continue to recieve Blizzard's blessing." It's almost like hearing one side of the conversation -- we don't know what Blizzard said to him (if anything), but he definitely sounds spooked.

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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.

Howdy folks. Alex and I had to take a little time away from our daily column to focus on other things. While I can't say just yet what we've been working on, I can say that you'll enjoy it when you see it.

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An article posted a few hours ago on the CNN.com Tech site discusses the rise of virtual currency in the real-world economy. Although hardly the focus of the piece, the article mentions WoW. The author refers to gold selling as an example of virtual currencies and their impact on real world economies. The main focus of the article is to reveal the rise of virtual currencies in the real-world, which we feel is a very valid point. In fact, the mere existence of the WoWenomics blog is but one example of the rise in interest in the economies of virtual worlds and this sort of virtual currency trading.

The CNN article also refers to the virtual gold trade as a black market although we at WoWenomics, while still certainly not fans of the gold for cash industry, view it more as a gray market. This is exemplified simply by virtue of the fact that, while it is a violation of Blizzard’s ToS, the purchase of gold (and other virtual currencies) for cash is still technically legal.

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The reason this change ended up needing to be made has to do with what they wanted to do with ammo in patch 3.1. They had grand plans for an ammo revamp (which I don't think they've ever quite revealed), and as a result they stopped designing new tiers of ammo, so raiding hunters now are stuck with the same bullets they were using at the start of Wrath. This change rolls the DPS from non-existent higher tiers of ammo into the weapons.

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Worried about your chances of winning one of the battlebot pets from the Game Fuel promotion? Worry no more! Over the weekend, a Mountain Dew representative stated on their forums that everyone who registers and participates in the promotion will get one. The pet is not one of the items you need to win from the tokens we've been grinding RL dailies for. If you don't care about winning the Razer or AlienWare products, you can stop grinding your Badges of Dew.

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Patch 3.1.2 was released today, and that means the Blizzard downloader will inevitably become clogged and congested tonight as millions of people around the world try to update their game to the latest version.

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Area 52, Auchindoun, Azuremyst, Blade's Edge, Blood Furnace, Coilfang, Dawnbringer, Exodar, Fizzcrank, Galakrond, Ghostlands, Grizzly Hills, Shattered Halls, Terokkar, The Scryers, The Underbog, Velen, Zangarmarsh

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Welcome Warlocks! Once weekly, Nick Whelan delves into the despicable underbelly of Dalaran to consort with cabalist casters, who help him channel Beelzebub into a fresh Blood Pact.

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I'd almost forgotten to try to predict when it was going to land, because it's such a minor patch, and now it's too late. Patch 3.1.2 is going live today! European players can count on getting it tomorrow.

• The Equipment Manager, which was originally slated to be a part of patch 3.1, is now enabled. Personally, I'm still sticking with Outfitter.
• The Argent Tournament mounts now have a new look. Old mounts already bought are upgraded to the new look automatically. You can buy both kinds of mounts from the Tourney vendors.
• Innervate: This ability has been redesigned to grant 450% of the casting Druid's base mana pool to the target over 20 seconds.
• [Warrior] Juggernaut: Critical strike chance bonus reduced to 25%, down from 100%.

The whole patch notes, including some fun class changes, are after the break.

General

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Maitseling of Chroniques Darnassiennes posted Gnomebusters over on Warcraft Movies. The movie came about because, apparently, Maitseling's guild mates complained that he hadn't featured gnomes in machinimas. How better to address that issue than with an homage to one of the finest films ever created?

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Does the Molten Core need an exterminator? You'd think all those core hounds would keep the pests away, but no. Solanine of <Eternal Descent> on Icecrown captured the moment as her raid's boomkin cast Insect Swarm on Ragnaros. Silly Raggy! Don't you know that bugs are attracted to fire? And trying to swat them with Sulfuron is just inefficient. Just get Thorim in to do some Chain Lightning.

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Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all MMOs, including WoW! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	First official confirmation that new Blizzard MMO is original IP In a post on the official World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard community manager Zarhym came out and said the new MMO was in fact an original IP, saying, "We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it's a shell of a game thus far. We've already stated it'll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It's an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this."
	Runes of Magic reaches 1 million registered users Here we are, not even two full months after the release of Frogster's Runes of Magic, and they're already announcing that they've hit the one million registered user milestone. Not only has this announcement come so soon after launch, but the EU and NA public hasn't even known about the game for a year yet, according to the Berlin-based publisher.
	Free Realms destroys the 1 million account speed record We've known it was going to be a strong contender since the first time we laid eyes on Free Realms. Once we stepped into the world last month and started playing the game, we knew it was going to be even bigger than we'd previously thought. Sure enough, we were right. News has come out this morning, courtesy of John Smedley on Twitter, that Free Realms crossed the 1 million account mark in just eighteen days since launch.
	Massively introduces: Betawatch! Welcome to Betawatch, Massively's newest weekly report on the state of MMO betas. In each installment, we'll report everything from the latest open betas, closed betas and even alphas in one convenient place. Plus, we'll make sure to include as much info on each game's current status, including projected release dates (if known) and links to the sign-up forms to get yourself into that beta you've been seeking.

	Age of Conan celebrates its one-year anniversary It's almost the first anniversary of Age of Conan's release, and Funcom's Glen "Famine" Swan was reflecting on the past year when he found the "One Year Later" video. Although it's a fairly well-made piece, it doesn't come from Funcom; a community member called "CptHeatSink" is given the credit on Famine's MMORPG blog.
	Hints of the Smuggler class in new SWTOR timeline update Who broke the Mandalorian blockade on Coruscant? Why, it was those wily Smugglers, that's who! The Sith weren't expecting the Galactic Republic to find assistance with that particular criminal aspect, but find it they did -- and you can learn all about it through the latest Star Wars: The Old Republic timeline update.
	Champions Online pushes release date back It looks like the message of "Don't release it until you're done" has been heard loud and clear in the MMO industry - at least by the crew over at Cryptic Studios, anyway. This morning Tara "IronAngel" Jennings announced that they have decided to push the release date for Champions Online back from July 14th to September 1st to allow for more development time on their highly-anticipated upcoming superhero MMO.
	A Lapse of Loyalty As they say, you never forget your first time, and to the brand new MMO player, it isn't immediately apparent that there is a substantial genre behind the acronym, spanning into the hundreds of titles. Indeed, the acronyms themselves are probably things that make little sense. For the true newbie, there is only The One Game, an unexpectedly deep and broad game, which swiftly becomes as much a place to be as a way to pass a few hours of an evening. Mine happened to be EverQuest, but it could be any of the increasingly broad list of MMOs available today.
	Massively Hands-on: Neo Steam Yesterday, Massively was invited to the first official developer tour and hands-on for Neo Steam: The Shattered Continent. This tour took us through some of the game's gorgeous landscapes, travel mechanics, pet system, mounts, PvP and even a light-hearted race around the fountain in the middle of town square.
	Funcom's Q1 2009 report shows solid revenue Funcom has released a report detailing their financials for the first quarter of 2009. They brought in over US$7 million in revenue for the period, and although this figure is slightly less than the previous quarter (but without the disastrous US$23 million depreciation loss), they are pleased with the stability of their earnings during the economic turbulence of recent times.

It's that time of the week again, everyone Yes, that's right. It's time for WoW Insider to 'celebrate' maintenance Tuesday with free stuff. We're back to TCG loot codes this week, once again courtesy of the great folks over at WoWTCGLoot.com.

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It never ceases to amaze me how huge Azeroth is. As I've leveled and explored, installed expansions and patches, that wonder has never left me. But of course, one of the reasons I like WoW so much is it's not all about fighting and killing things twenty times larger than me. This week I've been fishing in the Dalaran fountain, along with half of my server. No, don't worry, this is not going to be a repeat of our earlier Breakfast Topic, even if It's a skill I've been trying to level for ages.

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Good Tuesday Morning, Everyone! While we're still recovering from the server downtime from last night, we have a whole new patch to muddle through as well, including extended downtime. Not only are all servers down from 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific, but some servers are getting the longer treatment, staying down til 1 PM Pacific. Check here for the list.

With that in mind, Tuesday morning is once again the perfect time to catch up on the latest WoW news.

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Also today:

• Algalon 10-Man World First Kill by Ensidia

Patch 3.1.2 on Live Servers this week
Patch 3.1.2 will be deployed on live servers this week. Just like all the time, nothing official yet but it should hit the live servers except if something really really really bad happens.

Argent Tournament Mounts
The Argent Tournament mounts are being updated with this patch. Mounts already purchased at the Argent Tournament will be replaced with the updated mounts when this patch goes live.

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Last week's maintenance saw a larger number of servers go down for an extended time in order to receive some hardware upgrades. This week it's the same game with a new batch of servers.

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