Patch 3.1.3 Client Patch Notes
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)Below you will find the patch notes for the next minor content patch. As we do not intend to release this patch on the public test realms, we thought we’d share the notes with you ahead of time. Please be aware that these changes are subject to revision until the patch is officially released.

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After the break you'll find the patch notes for Patch 3.1.3. This patch will not be appearing on the PTR, and will instead be making its way directly to the live realms. There is no date set for the live realms release at this time.

These notes are only the initial notes and subject to change. You have been warned.

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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.

Preambles are for suckers. Let's get this party started.

Anarax asked...

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A lot of you have noticed some issues with our RSS feed this afternoon (and a little bit last night) and trust me, we know that you know. Our inbox has been absolutely flooded! So to try and help the confusion (and slow the flood of e-mails), here's what happened: Our network (us, Joystiq, Massively, Engadget, etc) was hit with a few database problems over the last 24 hours.

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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.

"'Paladin, Schmaladin' ... No way a blog with a dumb name like that could be a decent web resour -- Oh, wait, what was that about MP5? Let me just crunch -- oh never mind, she's already ... Ahh, hang on, lemme just finish this how-to; seems pretty spot-on to me ... But first, I need to click on this blonde over here, because this cannot possibly be a real photo of the person who wrote all this stuff ..."

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WoW.com readers, it's up to you to decide the fate of Turpen the Gnome Warlock with Choose My Adventure. Help test the site's new features by participating in this event, casting your vote toward the many aspects of Turpen and following his exploits on Alex Ziebart's WoW.com profile!

It hasn't quite been a week since I started this adventure, but Tuesdays (or around there) will be the days you'll be seeing on-the-front-page updates for Turpen the Gnome Warlock from here on out. For everything in between that, keep an eye on my WoW.com profile. Whether you do that by bookmarking my profile or adding it to your feed, that's completely up to you! So with that said, what's gone down since this project began?

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Along with most of the Blizzard fansites, Arena Junkies is also conducting a BlizzCon ticket giveaway, and they want you to design your own Arena. Basically, you come up with an idea, supplement it with whatever drawings or pictures you'd like, and then submit it in their forum thread by June 5th. After that, they'll have the community choose the top three, and each of those winners will be on their way to Anaheim to visit Blizzard's big event. We bet there'll be some awesome ideas coming out of the contest by the end -- Arena players are nothing if not creative.

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I know for sure we've mentioned this on the podcast (in the ever-more-popular Turpster's Tips feature), but I'm not sure we've ever explicitly mentioned it on the site before, and this post from WoW Ladies is a great reminder to do so: next time you're checking out your character screen, try holding Alt as you mouse over the various loots you're wearing. You'll get a little popup with all of the gear in your bags that corresponds to that slot -- a (mostly) undocumented feature that showed up in patch 3.1 along with all of the other UI improvements.

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Updated Druid Forms Coming Soon
Quote from: Blizzard (Source)In our next major content patch, druids will find a host of new textures for two major forms, cat and bear. There will be five different designs for each of these forms for the Horde and Alliance. Night elves can choose to change their cat and bear look at any time by visiting the barber shop and changing their character's hair color, while tauren will be able to change which look they use by switching skin tones in the barber shop -- a new feature for tauren in the next major content patch. Given that there are more hair colors and skin tones than unique form looks, some colors and tones will overlap with these new textures. The hair and skin colors chosen will, in most cases, correspond with the color seen in the look of each form. Some similar colors that may share a particular cat texture will not necessarily share the same bear texture.

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Warlock writer Nick Whelan has been quoted as saying that the new WoW.com layout is ''trippin.' Stormwind City Guards later found Infinite Dust in the saddle bags of his Dreadsteed. While he was being held for further questioning, he wrote this week's Blood Pact.

On a whim, I pulled out some of my Dungeons and Dragons books a couple weeks back, and convinced a buddy of mine that we should pick up where we left off in one of our old games. Since then my head has been wrapped around Zalekios Gromar, Vasharan Warlock on a mission to kill the gods that spited his people in millennia past. And while the Eldritch Blast of D&D isn't exactly the same as WoW's Shadow Bolt, it certainly got me in the mood for role playing.

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digg_url = 'http://digg.com/pc_games/New_WoW_Druid_art_form_finally_coming_in_patch_3_2'; You hear that sound?

That's the sound of a few million Druid players crapping their pants.

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Here's a big oops -- a company named M&A Technology accidentally shipped out a unit of their Companion Touch PC that contained some malware on it, including a password stealer that targeted World of Warcraft. It was an accident -- apparently someone at the factory decided to upgrade the computer's drivers and software before shipping it out, but they used a USB stick that had been infected with the bad apps, and thus in the process infected the brand new computer. Fortunately, the person who recieved the computer apparently scanned and caught the bad code before any damage was done -- I guess if you buy a computer from a brand you've never heard of, it's worth giving it an antivirus and malware scan at least once before you use it.

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Everybody makes mistakes…whether it is buying an item at too high a price or crafting an item when the materials would have sold for more, at some point every active trader will slip up. Here are a few strategies and thoughts for recovering from bad trades.

Identifying the Issue

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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.

	Choose my Adventure: Massively style Today, we're proud to introduce a brand new weekly column here at Massively called Choose my Adventure, lovingly stolen from our siblings at WoWInsider (now WoW.com). The concept is simple: we create a brand new character in an MMO and document its adventure in a special image gallery and a weekly journal post -- but with a catch.
	Next World of Warcraft patch announced: Call of the Crusade Blizzard has announced that the next major content patch in the works for World of Warcraft is Patch 3.2: Call of the Crusade. Patch 3.2 will expand upon the features of Wrath of the Lich King, and Blizzard lists a few highlights:
	Latest LotRO test realm patch notes released There's something really exciting about a new set of patch notes, especially when it's for a fantasy MMO like Lord of the Rings Online. Turbine have just released the latest patch notes for the Bullroarer test server for volume 2 of book eight. These notes will hit live servers -- barring the usual changes, updates and revisions -- in June.
	A few reasons to cage the nerdrage There's so much anger in the consumer market these days. It seems like when a new product comes up, there has to be this bandwagon of people who roll in and start nerdraging over the product. Oh, APB isn't up your alley? Better nerdrage about that! You don't like Warhammer Online? Rev that nerdrage engine nice and loud so your neighbors can hear it.

	Infiltrating SOE to get a sneak peek of The Agency Eurogamer's Oli Welsh had a chance to visit SOE headquarters and chat with Hal Milton, Lead Designer of The Agency. We think it's fair to say this is the most we've heard about the spy-MMO in a long time and it has us excited about what we might find out at E3 2009.
	Steampunk MMO Gatheryn opens closed beta registration The developers at Mindfuse have been hard at work on Gatheryn, a steampunk MMO that Massively got a preview of at GDC 2009. The HeroEngine-powered Gatheryn will incorporate casual and minigame elements in addition to standard MMO game mechanics. Now gamers will have a chance to see what the title has to offer in the Gatheryn closed beta, for which Mindfuse has announced they're taking registrations.
	Once you play MMORPGs, can you ever go back to single-player RPGs? Before MMOs came around, I used to be a pretty active single-player RPG gamer. My platform of choice was the console but I eventually got into a few PC titles as well.
	Massively interview: Jumpgate Evolution and the art of ship design We recently had a chance to speak with Darren Klein, NetDevil's art director for Jumpgate Evolution. He's got plenty to say about the design process that goes into creating the ships for their upcoming space shooter MMO. It's a very interesting read, too. Example: you wouldn't have guessed that it only takes about five days to design a ship from start to finish.
	Evolve your 3D avatar Evolver (currently in alpha) is an interesting service. It allows you to build a 3D avatar either from scratch and components or from a photograph of yourself, and export that avatar as an image, a functional 3D model in a couple of different formats (presently Maya [MA] or Kaydara 3D Data Exchange Format [FDX]), or a ready-made avatar for a number of 3D virtual environments.
	Developer Diary: Exploring Levels in Fallen Earth Starting today, Massively is proudly hosting a brand new developer journal from the Fallen Earth team. This five-part series will explore various levels in Fallen Earth, their storylines and how they make the player experience richer. This first one takes us through Kingman Prison, and was written by Grace Hagood.

Take a moment and check out the immensity of Holy Priest PvP.

There's no consensus about the existence of an afterlife in WoW. From the number of ghostly undead in the game I'd wager there's a good possibility that you just end up hanging around in a non-corporeal form, unless the Lich King gets to you first. Nevertheless, it looks like Beefywife of <Legion of Fire> on Antonidas is getting sucked into some form of post-death experience. Whether she's being beamed up to heaven or sucked down to hell depends on your perspective. She writes that this picture was taken after she was knocked off her mount, fell to her death, and ended up stuck in the mountain beneath the Temple of Storms.

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Who remembers Echoes of War? A musical extravaganza originally released last year in legendary and standard editions from Eminence. Well both the official site and Worldofwar.net are reporting that the standard edition is being re-released on June 16th with new artwork.

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Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, rather than plagiarizing from Stephen Hawking, we plagiarize from ourselves, and for the second time in column history, we shelve our Previously Scheduled Guide in favor of an emergency summit concerning Tree conservation.

A question for Druids from Ghostcrawler himself; is Tree of Life form fun?

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The one little problem with having a nice 3-day weekend is that getting back into gear after it's over can be a bit tough. But here we are, back on the chain gang, nose back on the grindstone, and all that good stuff. Anyway, there are rolling restarts, as well as some minor maintenance on a handful of servers. If you're reading this from work though, it probably doesn't matter as much, since you can't play WoW regardless. Unless you're one of those lucky dogs that has a job that lets you play WoW. In which case you may have trouble doing that this morning.

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So blue poster Ancilorn asked a question over on the EU official forums that was just offbeat enough that I thought I'd ask it here: What's your favorite Alliance Male Dance?

I guess I never thought about it too much before, but really, Alliance male dances are just sort of... there. We have a bunch of old standbys. The Saturday Night Fever disco, the vaguely Cossack Dwarven dance, the old Michael Jackson Night Elf dance and that weird... thing Gnomes do.

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Flame Leviathan 10-Man killed by 2 Players
Strijder and Bekstinker were a bit bored and decided to kill The Flame Leviathan in 10-Man .... without anyone else. After 20+ wipes because of bugs they finally took down the first boss of Ulduar with only 2 people and 1 vehicle, congratulations to them!

Blue posts
Quote from Blizzard staff Itemization
Int vs. Spirit
You are rarely choosing between just Int and Spirit. It's also fine if you prefer Int to Spirit. The danger comes when you say "My gear is junk because it has Spirit on it." That is what paladins are saying about MP5. Our stance is that's not a problem with the gear -- it's a problem with the stat not being attractive enough. We already run the risk of PvE gear being as homogenized and well, boring, as PvP gear. We need to use all of the stats we have available or every tier of healing plates is going to be "Your previous tier, plus 10% more Int and Crit." ( Source )

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We have a maintenance announcement for Tuesday morning, but it's a little weird, so bear with me here. First, starting at 1 AM Pacific, the Authentication server will undergo maintenance. That means if you have a battle.net account, you won't be able to log in. But hey, we can hope this'll take care of all those unable to log in problems later, right?

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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.

• Still looking to get your hands on some BlizzCon tickets? WoW-Achievements.com is currently running a trivia contest, so head on over and give it a shot!
• Sideshow and Syrana take Memorial Day to Azeroth, honoring fallen heroes of the Horde and Alliance.
• We're a few days late, but have you roleplayers out there seen Too Many Annas' Friday Five this week? A good opportunity to take a look at the Varian/Garrosh conflict through the eyes of your character!
• One of our favorite blogs, The Wordy Warrior, has a brand new site and keeps the great content flowing: Check out An Officer's Guide to the Trial Period.
• Lorecrafted reviews the latest issue of the World of Warcraft comic.


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