Blizzard has posted an online preview of the next edition of the World of Warcraft comic book, issue number 19, and it's full of something we love doing: Scourge killin'. Actually, not to spoil it for you (it's only a few pages long), but it looks like the book is revisiting the old attacks on Stormwind (well at least the planned attack on Stormwind) and Ogrimmar right before the last expansion.

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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.

• Graylo of Gray Matter talks stat weights and spell priorities for the second in a pair of Moonkin builds.
• Rogue-Rogue reacts to the Nitro Boots stealth nerf from patch 3.1.2.
• Shields Up! pulls together a few essential macros for Shaman of all flavors.
• Hunter DPS has changed significantly since The Burning Crusade, shifting from a shot rotation to more of a shot priority system. If you're not sure what that means, you should probably read this.


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The University of Nevada, Las Vegas' student newspaper, the Rebel Yell, has an article up about a student there named Michael McCreery, who's studying how people interact in online games. Unfortunately, most of the article is about the game itself (most of which we already know, obviously), and there's not much about how he actually did the study: apparently he had people play WoW using only the ingame chat, and surveyed them afterwards about it.

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Not too shabby! This also means that those mounts you want -- including the recently-reduced Argent Hippogyph -- might be a little more within your reach, and faster at that.

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First of all, I need to thank each and every one of you for participating in our Beta launch, and providing your comments, bug reports and suggestions. Keep them coming!

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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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
So we said that we would have a special edition of The Queue this past Saturday. It never happened. Why? Well, the intent was for it to be entertainment while we all sat in the queue for BlizzCon tickets. Yammer about BlizzCon, get excited, all of that sort of thing. Adam and I put ourselves in the ticket queue, were getting ready to push the post out, and then... ticket sales were over. It was kind of a pointless post at that point! So it never happened. We apologize for that.

The ticket sales went surprisingly smoothly. We're always going to find something to gripe about (holy crap why don't they have more tickets) but the whole thing didn't come tumbling down this year, and that's such a massive improvement over last year. It was a good thing.

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New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the resources they need to get acclimated. Send us a note to suggest a WoW Rookie topic.

What's that? You can't hear because you're wanding? That's a good thing, young caster, a very good thing – because doing damage from afar is the savvy caster's modus operandi. At higher levels, wands are usually reserved for backup duty when you've run out of mana. For a leveling player, however, a wand is an effective method of killing mobs while reserving your limited mana pool for crowd control or healing.

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Our good friends at BlizzPlanet have obtained a ticket to the happiest place on Earth (BlizzCon, of course -- right next to some dump called Disneyland), and they're giving it away over on their site. There are a few hoops to jump through, but then again, how much do you want to go to BlizzCon? They will have you hunting around their archives for a few things, running over to the Mountain Dew website to earn some points and take a screenshot, and even checking out some comic books over at DC (their contest is probably part of the official fansite program, which would explain why you'll be visiting lots of Blizzard's licensing partners).

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We are so glad we get to use bigger pictures now, especially when they show off something this cool. Mirthical made these Alliance-branded fingerless mitts (actually, we're not sure that lion is an official Alliance logo, but he's cute enough) for a friend of hers who was such a big Warcraft fan that she put an Alliance crest on her wedding cake, too.

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Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss some of the tips and tricks to remember when raiding Ulduar.

With Ulduar laid wide open, many Rogues and their guilds are flocking to its gates. Brand new bosses and shiny gear upgrades are just two of the reasons that I've seen so many 'LFM Ulduar' advertisements in trade chat. However, as the dungeon is still relatively new, many of us haven't had the opportunity to confront every giant-sized boss in the instance.

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Late last night, as we were putting the finishing touches on our own spring-cleaning, popular WoW news and information portal WoWInsider.com became WoW.com. The name change was complimented by a change in design philosophy wherein the traditional light and open design was replaced with a dark background layout that is popular among many gaming web sites.

What is Rebranding Anyway?

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Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. After a minor hiatus, Matticus examines the pain that many Discipline Priests experience: That they're just not good enough and how to even the odds.

Apologies for the lengthy delay. I needed to grab some field data which took way longer than it should have. Coincidentally enough, Amanda Dean wrote about this very same issue a few days ago concerning healing meters and Discipline Priests. It still makes me sad every time I read about this. A raid leader or heal leader asks a Discipline Priest to go back to Holy because they feel their performance isn't good enough. In most cases, I think it's just them not truly understanding how Discipline works. It has always been about prevention not healing.

"You're too low on the meters. Switch back to Holy."

How many times have you Discipline Priests heard this? Being forced to switch back to Holy because the powers that be didn't understand nor fully realize the true capabilities of Discipline Priests? It's a good thing my bench boss didn't tell me to switch to Holy. Then again, I am the bench boss.

My friends, there are tools that can help us. It's impossible to change people's minds on theory. But my CSI idol Grissom's always said that evidence cannot be denied. Let's stop using the same measuring stick that the majority has been using and look at something to help even the playing field.

Let's start with WoW Web Stats. It was one of the premiere tools that came out some time ago and helped raids really analyze specific details of their fights.

But it's not Disc Priest friendly, so we're going to stop using it.

Set your sights to WoW Meter Online.

Here's a side by side comparison. This is the same combat log uploaded to WWS and to WMO. Can you spot the difference? Yes, a Holy Priest is leading the charge. Yours truly here is Discipline and I'm the other Priest below. WWS shows 4.2 million effectively healed whereas WMO displays 5.8 million healed. That's a difference of 1.6. Something is seriously wrong here. What kind of weird discrepancy is this?

Let's take a closer look at my individual play via WWS.

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Fortunately, Bornakk knows (I sometimes suspect he knows everything, with that manly beard of his). The answer is that the Projected Textures option, in Video Effects, now defaults to on. I assume players that had it turned off - like myself - had it turned on for us. What the option does is display things like the rune circles for Blizzard and Rain of Fire, which many players were confused to find disappear when patch 3.1 hit. So if you're wondering what the change was, or wondering why you suddenly see spell details that you didn't before, now you know.

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XT-002 Hard Mode US First Kill by VANQUISH
Earlier today VANQUISH (US-Cho'gall) killed XT-002 in Hard Mode. As announced earlier today the achievement was nerfed in patch 3.1.2 and I'd rather not call it world first to start another discussion on US/EU servers getting patched first/last. (Note: Still a world first, technically)


Extra Champion's Seals in 3.1.2
Small update on the Argent Tournament rewards, the Champion's Purse now has a chance to drop a Champion's Seal. It will probably help you get your Argent Hippogryph faster, especially with the lowered price.

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The In Memory - Retribution Final Trailer is one hell of a piece of work. The author, Necka, says that he's over 70% done with the actual movie, and that he and his production team are in the final stretch of completion. The script writer is Kirochi, who seems to have created a powerful story.

The trailer hints at the movie's epic action, including more than a few appearances from WoW's biggest bad guys. The movie has been through a few bumps and bruises such as delayed start times, and having to work with scenes that existed before its current incarnation. Even with those challenges, this looks like the final production is totally going to be worth it.

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World First Heroic: Ulduar Glory of the Raider
Ensidia just completed Heroic: Glory of the Ulduar Raider! They're the first guild in the world to get the Ironbound Proto-Drake, congratulations to them!

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It's close to midnight, and something evil's lurking in the dark. Under the moonlight you see a sight that almost stops your heart ... a team of identical dancing night elves? Undead mage Tirin of <Lex Non Scripta> on Lightning's Blade managed to terrify the whole Undercity before the locals realized that he was just messing around with Mirror Image, Winterfall Firewater and an Orb of Deception. Luckily for the Horde, the Alliance has yet to develop cloning technology. Well, except for female gnomes with pink pigtails.

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• Icecore Staff
• Boreal Guard
• Malice

You can see a screenshot of the new stats at right.

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Since we launched WoW.com late last night, we've had numerous people writing in about an issue that has cropped up regarding one of the aspects of our tracking addon. We'll continue to respond to those reports personally as necessary, but we figured it would be wise to get the issue and the fix out in the open right off the bat.

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I'm going to be honest here. I hate the current iteration of arms spec.

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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.

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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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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Since the new site went live last night, an awful lot of our comments have been from here in the EU. Hundreds of our lovely readers have been having some problems, namely they can't find their characters using the on-site search engine.

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Good morning Europe! How are we all this week? Enjoying Azeroth? As usual, it's maintenance time once more and today there is a little extra excitement in the form of patch 3.1.2.

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The shot above actually takes place after Rigged denied instance-ninja'ing the last two bosses of Naxx... until his guild found out that, according to his achievements, he really had taken their kills earlier that day. Strange how all of a sudden plenty of justifications (Naxx is easy, it was only two bosses, "I was bored") jump to mind after he's caught, when before all he could do was deny it ever happened.

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Ladies! Gentlemen! Children of all ages! We, the writers, editors, and innocent bystanders at WoW Insider would like to welcome you all to our new home: WoW.com.

Our new domain serves a broader purpose than saving your typing fingers a few characters, though. You've probably already noticed our new, more streamlined design -- all the better for providing you with more content and less clutter. But in addition to the content you all know and (hopefully) love, we'd like to introduce you to the beta launch of WoW.com Profiles. By creating profile on WoW.com you can:

• show off your characters
• make blog posts & galleries to share with others
• communicate with your guild & your friends
• let everyone know what you're up to in the game we all love
• by downloading the WoW.com addon (for PC or Mac), you can also keep all of your friends up to date on what you're doing in game -- and make blog posts and upload screenshots directly from your game client.

Sound interesting? Head over and sign up (you can use an existing AIM or Facebook login) and start getting involved in the WoW.com community! (Having trouble? Take a look at our getting started guide or send us an e-mail explaining the problem. We'll help you figure it out!)

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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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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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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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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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There's a great question fluttering around the community lately: just when are we anyway? It's a good one for the Lore Nerd, actually, and maybe he can answer it in more detail than I can, but it's almost a question of relativity as much as it is of lore. The official lore says that World of Warcraft takes place four years after Warcraft III (hence the reason for the "four years have passed..." in the opening cinematic). And since then, we've heard from Blizzard that they consider every expansion to be another year in the history of Azeroth -- Burning Crusade takes place a year after the original game, and Wrath of the Lich King two years after that. But when, for example, did Van Cleef fall? Has it been just under two years since his plan to attack Stormwind was defeated? And what about our characters -- you'd assume that if you started from level 1 today, the story would be beginning four years after the events of Warcraft III again, so have our characters aged two years since they first stepped foot out of Elwynn or Durotar? And we'll ignore that when you get to Orgrimmar, you might see Death Knights walking around, who technically won't join the Horde until two years in the future.

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Blizzard has renewed their agreement with a company called TeliaSonera to provide bandwidth for them in Europe. They just made a very similar deal with AT&T for the US -- it's the bandwidth that connects their servers to the millions of connections that lead back to your computer as you play World of Warcraft. Paul Sams, Blizzard COO, says they've been pleased with the service, and that the contract renewal was for two years.

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For details on the loot, see Ensidia's announcement; there's some great stuff there. Mek, from Ensidia, had this to say about the fight: "It's a pretty intense fight but not quite as hard as Blizzard made it out to be. The 1 hour timer is the real challenge since you must do a perfect attempt within it." Of course, I think "not quite as hard" for Ensidia is probably a pretty good challenge for the rest of us mortals. Congratulations, Ensidia!

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Yes, if you were around on Saturday, you know that the first round of BlizzCon tickets sold out, and sold out fast. Tickets went on sale right around 10am PST (which was 1pm EST), and sold out just about 28 minutes later. If the queue numbers are trustworthy, over 21,000 people (we've heard as high as 25,000 at a time) logged in to buy tickets that day, and from unconfirmed reports around the web, it seems like about 5,000 to 8,000 tickets were sold: most people who got in line around number 5,000 were able to pick a ticket up, and that was a few minutes in already. Some of those people are already selling tickets on eBay as well.

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It's a good set-up, but the thread really starts to shine when later posters get into it, like "You didn't specify the flavour of the pop tart, so we can't exactly see what the problem was. If it was strawberry that's kinda understandable since it is considered a hero class, but if it was brown sugar, yeah, you're making this up." You heard it here first: Strawberry is the Death Knight of toaster snacks.

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Armor penetration is probably one of the most misunderstood stats in the game, for a number of reasons. First of all, it's only become popular lately -- while it's been in the game since 1.10, it's only started showing up regularly on items in Wrath. And even then it's really only a meta-meta stat: the core abilities like Strength and Agility are easy to understand, the next level of abilities are things like hit rating and crit rating, and then armor penetration, you could argue, goes another level after that: it's a stat that affects a stat affected by a stat. It's for that reason, then, that Xanthan argues we need a more elegant solution.

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Blizzard Europe recently updated their jobs site with a host of new positions which strongly suggest more EU expansion, this time in Italy and Poland. The last major EU release was a localised Russian version of the game which came out last year.

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

As people approach the end of their lives, they often think about how they will bestow their wealth and possessions, what is called their "estate." Guilds likewise have an estate in the form of their bank: BOEs, consumables, mats, all sorts of miscellaneous items, and potentially thousands in gold. Most guilds have an awful lot of stuff in there. So who gets what if the guild goes six-feet under? This week, a reader asks how to go about dividing it all up.

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A sudden wave of crashes has hit the North American WoW servers, with the Emberstorm and Whirlwind Battlegroups especially hard hit.

As of this writing, most of the affected servers are still down. Blizzard is aware of the issue and is looking into it, but has no further information to give at this time. We'll update this post when we hear more.

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World of WarCrafts returns to WoW Insider with a broadened focus to spotlight art and creativity by WoW players and fans, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction – and yes, (War)crafts. Share your creativity: tip us off via the tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts).

Welcome back to World of WarCrafts, where we highlight the creative side of life as WoW player. Whereas previously this feature has focused on arts and crafts, we'll now be talking about a broader range of creative efforts: fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction – and yes, crafts. Got something worth showing off? Shoot us a note on our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts).

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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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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 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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I'd like to take a moment to address another reader email. In this post I kind of skirt the direct issues of recruiting and establishing a guild bank. I offer my best advice on the absolute basics of starting a guild. Please ignore spelling, grammatical, and punctuation errors in the reader's email, and direct all of your ire toward mine.

heya,

me and my friend want to start up our own to guild working towards raid progression. We have both done all pre 3.1 content on other characters on different servers and on moving to a new server have found it hard to find a guild that meets our needs/scheduale; thus we want to form our own guild. However neither of us has any experience in doing so, and would appreciate some tips on how best to start ie. how to recruit, how developed the guild bank needs to be etc

thanks

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We took to the virtual airwaves yet again last Wednesday, and despite a few audio issues (curse you, Ret Monkey!), we got a nice show in, including some talk about what's coming down in the PTR, including the changes in Wintergrasp. And as usual, we answer your emails -- this week's panel of Amanda Dean, Lesley Smith, and Turpster and I have all kinds of useful advice for you readers. Listen in and maybe you'll learn something.

And of course, next Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern is our big video show, featuring actual web video of all your favorite WoW Insider folks, and a few special guests, too. Plus, after the show, we're going to be hanging out on the It Came from the Blog realm of Zangarmarsh, where Turpster and I will duel, Peggle-style. Definitely be sure not to miss it -- we'll see you then.

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We gave the WoWenomics site some much needed spring-cleaning this afternoon and made a few changes:

Links Updated
Our side bar links have been updated and broken into two succinct categories. The first, Other WoW Finance Blogs is fairly self-explanatory. Any and all WoW finance blogs that we come across will be listed here so long as they meet the standards outlined on our Resources page. The second category, Rotating Blog Roll, is used as sort of our featured sites of the moment. This list will change every couple of weeks and is primarily used to feature any non-finance sites that have added us to their own blog rolls or stand out to us for some other reason.

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