Maintenance, you say? Unheard of! After all, what is wrong with a Paladin standing upright while riding her horse? Or what's wrong with constant errors telling intrepid adventurers additional instances cannot be launched?

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Patch 3.1.3 deployed on live servers this week
Patch 3.1.3 will be deployed on live servers this week. This is mostly a class balancing patch with a few changes to Ulduar.

New Pet
A new pet has been added to the game, according to the name this is most likely a China-only pet. (Keep in mind that WotLK isn't available yet in China)

• Jade Panda Cub - Right Click to summon and dismiss your jade panda cub.

New Achievement
Two Feats of Strength have been added.

• Murkimus the Gladiator - Proud owner of a Murkimus the Gladiator pet.
• Jade Panda Cub - Logged in during the Jade Panda Cub giveaway.

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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I love the Battlegrounds. In my mind, it's the halfway point between general world PvP (no objectives), which is a free-for-all, anything goes brawl and Arenas, which is a tightly controlled deathmatch environment. The former epitomizes war in its absolute sense -- no controls or limits for balance in terms of numbers or levels or gear, there are no match start times, and there is no set ending. Think of old school Hillsbrad PvP or run-of-the-mill gankage. It's pure conflict with no constraints. The flip side is Arenas, which is as close as the game can get to a sport, as much as possible trying to pit evenly matched teams against each other.

Battlegrounds are the compromise. The format tries (admittedly sometimes unsuccessfully) to control numbers as well as limit the instances where organized teams are matched against a rabble of random players. Brackets limit level disparity and map objectives give direction to the encounters. Battleground objectives give a little flavor to the PvP, although players can treat it like a deathmatch, too, sometimes at the expense of prolonging or losing the game. Solo players -- playing any class of any spec -- can have a go at it and come away with a good experience, as Battlegrounds aren't as harsh as Arenas in terms of team composition. In Patch 3.2, Blizzard plans to introduce a new Battleground, which should be pretty exciting. The fun doesn't stop there, either, as it looks like developers are at work on even cooler things for this aspect of the game.

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Word is coming through the grapevine that patch 3.1.3 will be released tomorrow. MMO-Champion is also confirming this, so given both of our information I'd say it's a sure bet.

We posted the patch notes last week when Zarhym released them, and they're after the break so you can become reacquainted with the small changes that'll be happening. If there are suddenly new notes tomorrow we'll let you know.

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We had a great time as always last Saturday on our podcast -- Turpster and I welcomed Kevin Dika, the winner of the Child's Play Children's Week auction, who gave a very generous donation to Penny Arcade's charity and won a guest spot with us on the show. We talked with Kevin about his WoW experience -- he plays a Ret Pally, but hey, nobody's perfect, right? -- and got some insight from him about running a guild in the game and what a tough job it can be, how to deal with kids and other folks playing along with you, and how to come up with a worthwhile balance between playing the game and living in real life. We answered your emails (including a few more "Turpster is..." emails), and then we talked about the most popular posts from the last week of WoW.com: the new Druid art form coming to the game, what's new in 3.1.3, and where Blizzard has gone wrong recently with 5-mans, and where they might go next.

It was an excellent show, and we're happy to have Kevin on to thank him for his support (and he did a pretty great job on the podcast, too). We'll be back on as usual next Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern over on the Ustream page, and we might even do some more video streaming next week -- we did a little bit during the aftershow this week, and it worked out better than I thought. Stay tuned.

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players and fans, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music, fan fiction – and yes, (War)crafts. Share your stuff by tipping us off via our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts).

You're not alone: Black Jelly made from Borean Man o' War does sound disgusting. We wouldn't make you eat that goop. Unless of course, you want a lot of mana and health back, and there's no Mage around; then, we think you should probably give it a shot. Go on, open up. Inky ... Jiggling ... See that little shimmy? It's really not that bad – rather as if it had been freshly milked from a Disgusting Oozeling. Gulp.

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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.

Dear Blizzard,

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Blogger and WoW.com friend Pixelated Executioner has introduced a brand new blog project -- he's working with a few other folks in the community on a new blog called Nourish, dedicated to providing some fun and relatively easy WoW-related recipes for real food. It all originally started over on Twitter, where a few of them decided to come up with some WoW-themed dish names, but eventually it escalated into the idea of an actual set of recipes, with the added bonus of getting some WoW players some real homemade food to eat as well (you can only go so far on Doritos and Mountain Dew, after all).

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

What does your guild mean to you? Is it a community of like-minded players enjoying the company of their peers, helping one another to meet goals, and overcoming challenges together? Or is it simply a means to an end, a treadmill of raid attendance and loot rewards, where you slog through the necessary steps but never feel any real companionship with your fellow raiders? Some guilds start off as the former -- a fun, social organization -- and then end up as the latter -- a tier-set assembly line. This week, one officer wants to know how this can happen and what he can do about it.

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Crygil's been getting to the bottom of the sea -- sea turtle, that is (sorry about that one). Some players wondered if it's getting picked up in just Northrend pools or all over Northrend waters, but as we originally told you in our guide to getting one of the game's coolest new mounts, it is supposed to come only from fishing in pools in Northrend. People are reporting it appearing from elsewhere, but straight from Blizzard's blue text, that's where it's supposed to come from.

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BlizzCon 2009 tickets went on sale for the last time on Saturday at 10am PST, and were reported as sold out less than 30 minutes later. As expected, there were lots of disappointed Blizzard fans, but compared to the way things worked last year, this year's system was much more fair and much less frustrating. Unfortunately, you had to be quick -- while the sellout time was actually around 10:24, tickets really sold out in a matter of seconds, because if you clicked the buy button even 30 seconds to a minute after it went live, you were too far back in the queue to buy tickets at all. But even though it was a very small window of chance, it was at least a fair chance -- Blizzard's meter for tickets left on Saturday started at around 50%, which indicates that they split the two days of sales right down the middle. As long as you showed up and clicked at the right time, you had as much chance as anyone else. At least we got a great game out of it.

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I feel like I say this every time I post a trailer, but I guess I'll say it again. I'm often nervous about featuring machinima trailers, because while the trailer can be super-duper Sylar-as-Spock-level awesome, it seems like half the time, the trailer never materializes into a movie. However, sometimes trailers look so cool that I can't help but point them out anyway. Farinar Films has a pretty solid reputation for delivery, though, so take a second to check out The Peasant: Cost of Freedom.

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The week starts slowly with an update to the ulduar loot pages and new comics. Depending on Blizzard's plans we might see Patch 3.1.3 deployed on live servers this week and druids will get a 2nd preview of the Updated Druid Forms. Stay tuned!

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Me, I like keeping my old weapons in the bank, lining them up in a nice row. I'd like to put them on a mantlepiece or something if they ever implement player housing. I really enjoy training new skills and recipes - the gold glimmer and "whoosh" sound are oddly satisfying. I like standing on things that can disappear (like mining nodes), making them disappear, and then sitting down or dancing on the empty air. These are all loves that have perplexed my guildies at one time or another. I also really like smelting.


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Fortunately, we have the Armory to help us separate the good from the bad, or at least the geared from the ungeared. Sites like Be Imba and WoW Heroes have been around for a while to help us more easily check a character's gear level.

Now a new site, PUG Checker, can show you at a glance what bosses a character has killed, and how many times - or rather, what bosses they've been present for a kill of. Above right you can see what it shows for raids on my priest (I don't like Malygos very much). If you click "show bosses," you can see specific raid bosses in raids; otherwise, it just counts kills of the end boss. It uses Armory data, of course, which is pretty accurate, but not always perfect. Like the site says, "don't shoot the messenger" if the numbers aren't quite right.


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• Name: Elaeli of <Wipes on Trash> on Bael'gun
• Location: Ulduar
• Here for: Phat lewtz
• Orientation: Male dwarves
• Hometown: East side of Silvermoon represent!
  
• Body Type: 5'8" / disproportionate
• Occupation: Holy paladin, keeper of the light, healer of the darkness within, micromanager of blessing timers
  


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