We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• This Saturday, the guild Exodus will be joining Stompalina and crew on the Rawrcast. It kicks off immediately after our own podcast, so give it a listen!
• Part seven of Too Many Annas' epic Angrathar fiction has been posted.
• James Peripheral, one of WoW.com's user bloggers, tells the world why he plays MMOs. Why? Family.
• Big Hit Box supplies some very basic tips for players new to grouping as melee. All of you new Death Knights and Retribution Paladins might want to take a look. Ret Vets get a pass.
• Do you have children that play WoW? Are you concerned that they might be seeing things in chat channels that they shouldn't be? NoStockUI has some suggestions for the parent that wants their child's game experience to be a little safer.


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Spinksville, following up to an earlier post concerning a great lore moment in Vengeance Landing, concludes that as a Horde player, Howling Fjord has emerged as the single best overall zone in Wrath. The more I consider it, the more I'm inclined to agree with her. The Fjord has a mostly unified questline that slowly splits off into sub-plots concerning the Kalu'ak and Taunka, and the farther you get, the more you realize the impact your previous actions have had on that little slice of the world (and most of it's not good). As Spinks observes, it's a very immersive experience that does a great job of conveying both the moral ambiguity of the Forsaken's position, and the fact that Northrend's a continent without a lot of good options. "Forced to choose between the lesser evil and the greater evil," she writes, "... you had better hope that the greater evil is very bad indeed because it is the only way to justify the things you have had to do."

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Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

From the configuration interface (/ihml), you can set up what macro you want to use in any given boss encounter or zone. The macro is generated upon entering a zone or loading BigWigs boss modules for a boss fight (no support for Deadly Boss Mods, as far as I know). You can also set up default macros for parties, raids, PvP, etc.

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We've already seen the graphics for three out of the four new feral forms we know are coming for druids in patch 3.2: Tauren bear and cat forms, and Night Elf bear forms. This only leaves Night Elf cat forms left to be seen. (They might be redesigning moonkin and tree forms too; they're being cagey about that when people ask. My guess would be no.)

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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.

You've always wanted to be the eye of the storm: a World of Warcraft tank. You're working your way up toward level 80, quest by quest and zone by zone. Maybe you've consulted a leveling guide and done some research around the internet, and you're sporting a shiny, efficient leveling spec. Or maybe you're taking things more casually, experimenting with different specs and abilities on your own and devoting most of your energy to soaking up the sights and the lore, meeting new friends and settling into your first guild.

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Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.

Hello, my name is Robin and I'm an altaholic. I'm not here to try to stop, however. I find it a lot of fun and playing games is all about fun. But it has prevented me from experiencing the endgame content when everyone is excited about it, rather than just spinning their wheels waiting for the next expansion. So, now I want to choose which alt to take to the end. But which one will be easy for leveling and still be valuable in groups when I reach the endgame?

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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 talk about a few of the general raiding tips every Rogue should know.

As a break in the boss-by-boss breakdown of Ulduar fights, I wanted to go over a few general raiding tips for Rogues. Some of them may be very old ideas that you've been using since level 60, while a few others are new tricks that we've learned in WotLK. Hopefully you'll be able to glean a few good bits of information to take with you the next time you zone into any raid. There's nothing more important than properly preparing for a new fight, but knowing the general tactics for any encounter will make understanding new fights much easier.

First, however, I would like to comment on the new Overkill. Its new form is a significant buff when looking at total energy generated, and also for PvE Mutilate Rogues. However, it is a nerf to our 6-second burst window during a Cheap Shot -> Kidney Shot combo. I feel this will end up being a net buff for Rogues, as relying solely on the first 6 seconds of a fight in PvP has become far to gimmicky for us to rely on.

Feint:
I'll never forget the day that Feint first found its way to my hotbar. I was duo'ing Razorfen Kraul with another Rogue, trying to kill the pig boss (Agathelos the Raging) for his infamous Swinetusk Shank. After stealthing through most of the instance, we finally reached the boss. With creative use of Sap and Blind, we were able to conquer the guards outside his gate. That was the first time I actually used Sap!

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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.

Today's musical selection for the queue will be the late great John Coltrane playing My Favorite Things in 1961 opposite the piano stylings of the equally great McCoy Tyner. Yes, some people may cover their ears and scream "omg soprano sax!" but others will no doubt spend 10 minutes watching and listening to these master musicians partake in this performance of a quintessential jazz song.

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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.

WoW.com's Adam Holisky has been itching to take a WoW course for quite a while now -- so Adam, this 15 Minutes of Fame is for you. While some people still don't get that playing WoW doesn't lead to becoming a college dropout, there are plenty of others who recognize the game to be a rich resource not only as entertainment but even as a venue for anthropological research.

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Just seven weeks after patch 3.1 brought Ulduar to the live servers, Ensidia has conquered it. They just made the world-first kill of the 25-man version of Algalon, the optional final boss that appears only after completing every other boss's hard mode. Algalon only allows one hour per raid lockout period of attempts on him.

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Warning: This movie will contain spoilers if you have not completed the instance titled Caverns of Time: The Culling of Stratholme.

You can think of The Culling of Stratholme by shadowline1990 as a "cover video." Basically, he took the in-game events that take place during the instance of the same name, and applied a more cinematic feel to them. He opens with a current-day shot of Stratholme, complete with Scarlet Crusaders wandering by. Then, in a cut scene, moves to the argument between Arthas, Jaina, and company.

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Should warriors and druids no longer generate rage from damage taken? Ghostcrawler mentions this as a possibility being considered to change the way warriors and druids tank, one that would eliminate difficulties when rage-using tanks take too little damage/avoid too many attacks and have trouble tanking content that they outgear or are using avoidance heavy gear to tank.

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Our anonymous submitter sent in this picture titled "Baddest Shammy Screenshot Ever!" and I've got to agree with him there. It's always nice when character screenshots end up looking like something that should be part of a cinematic. Anyway, he writes that this effect was caused by the use of Thunderstorm while Water Walking. Hmm. I'm sure that goes against National Weather Service recommendations. If you see an elemental shaman in the area, get to shore and seek shelter immediately!

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Algalon 25 World First Kill by Ensidia
Ensidia just killed Algalon in 25-Man.

• News post on Ensidia.com


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• Player/guild housing
• Ability to be in multiple guilds simultaneously
• Ability to start a character at a higher level than 1 (like Death Knights)
• Mounted combat
• Cosmetic gear (ability to have one set of gear equipped, and another set displayed)

I'm sure there are more commonly desired features that I just haven't thought of yet.

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Apologies for this week -- I'm at E3 working like crazy, and Guildwatch has ended up on the low priority list. But I'm not going to leave you with nothing: though it's a little shorter than normal, we've still got your downed, recruiting, and dramatic news of the week. Click below to read on, and we'll be back to full strength next week.

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We don’t normally break out individual server prices- preferring instead to look for and study trends identified by producing an average across servers. Examining an average allows us to normalize single-server anomalies. This is important as a server’s economy is a fragile thing and can be manipulated significantly by a single person (even, sometimes, unintentionally). Our averages correct for this imperfection by producing a composite index and, ideally, a trend. However, given the recent conversations on the reliability of averages on both this site and others, we decided, this time, to give the data a second look by breaking out the individual server reports. What we found was most interesting…

Recently, we tested the prices of the four most popular Northrend flasks. To be perfectly honest, after a brief two-week study we found the initial results to be fairly unremarkable. Outside of the normal slow deflationary movement and slight weekday vs. weekend cycle that we’ve observed and reported on previously (and this time to an even lesser degree) it would seem that there was really not much to report.

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