Here's an offhand, one that works pretty well for Priests.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Blizzard recently ran a global creative writing contest: write fan fiction set in any of the main three Blizzard universes (Diablo, Warcraft, or Starcraft - no Lost Vikings, apparently), submit it to Blizzard, and win fabulous prizes. The grand prize winner (one Andrew Moeller Sarah Pine) won a trip to Blizzard HQ to meet the devs, as well as a Frostmourne sword. Seven runners-up got signed novels and other lore paraphernalia.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

• Pages for each item, with information on where it comes from, what it disenchants into, and how to link it in game. All the same info from the official Armory, basically.
• 3D models for some items. Not as good as Wowhead's, but nice if you're already on the site, I guess.
• A desktop app, built in Adobe Air (and hence cross-platform) to show 3D models of items. Not really sure what the point of this is, but somebody probably likes it.
• Heirloom calculator: Now this is cool. It lets you take any heirloom item and see how its stats scale at any level. Not many sites have this.
• A talent calculator. It's slow, jittery, and not particularly attractive, but they do have a talent calculator.
• A "powered by Armory Light" JavaScript to include on your own site, which gives you not only item tooltips (which a few other sites do), but also character tooltips, like the one at right (an example character, not one of mine). Seriously cool. I can definitely see myself using this feature; it's a great way to get a thumbnail sketch of a character.

A mixed bag overall; some cool novel features, some knock-offs of other sites. And although the title was in jest, this new version does take almost as long to load for me as the official Armory does, and it feels nearly as heavy, sort of defeating the "Light" part of the site's name. It also assumed my feral druid was DPS (instead of tank), thus making completely wrong conclusions about the suitability of my enchantments. Minus points for appropriating the Mac OS X installer icon; it looks silly and out-of-place. Still, I'll probably use the site from time to time, at least for the character tooltips and heirloom scaling.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

MLG Colombus WoW 3v3 Tournament - Day 1
Tonight starts the eight team World of Warcraft Round Robin tournament in Colombus as the top teams from all over the United States plus Ensidia from Europe compete for $15,000 in cash and prizes.

Scoreboard - Gotfrag.com

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

This week, Totem Talk covers the mail options for 25 man Ulduar, and also presents reader screenshots! Since I'm not raiding Horde-side as much right now (Malfurion, I miss you, especially the fine folks in the Consummate Vees, one heck of a good group of people) I've been using my Draenei shammy for the screens, and after many comments demanding the return of horde shamans, I finally threw down the gauntlet and dared the readers to provide them if they missed them so much.

Clearly, I had underestimaged your desire to see orcs, taurens and trolls back alongside this column. Well, far be it from me to stand in your way. Readers Chris Bell and Adam Brien both sent me good pictures of their orc shamans (this week we meet Adam's shaman) as did Claire Jones, whose tauren shaman will be featured after the cut just because I have a soft spot for tauren shamans. (Vishypants, you are remembered.) Now, don't take this to mean you'll never see a draenei screenshot here again, cause even if you don't like them I do. But if readers keep sending in those screenshots I guarantee some of them will make it to this column.

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

The World of Warcraft's second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, changed the way that we players, as tradespeople, view professions and altered the reasoning behind our choices to pursue them.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

It's been some time since I last looked at the Top Lists on the official World of Warcraft site. I only thought to glance at it since I stumbled upon my own post about it from December of last year, when Loken reigned supreme as the most dangerous mob in the game. These days, Yogg-Saron's other minions have taken his crown from him. Interestingly, the most dangerous mob bounces back and forth between the first boss of Ulduar and one of the last bosses of Ulduar. Flame Leviathan is apparently far more deadly than I'd ever have expected, and either there are more players than I thought fighting General Vezax and Yogg-Saron, or the few guilds on those two bosses really like wiping. I guarantee that my raid added a thousand deaths to the Guardian of Yogg-Saron tally a few of those nights.

The correlation between Flame Leviathan being tops or Vezax being tops seems to be a matter of the day of the week. Monday night leading into Tuesday morning, Vezax and Yogg-Saron reign supreme. Wednesday and Thursday when everyone has a fresh Ulduar ID? Flame Leviathan is ahead significantly. Makes sense. 'Risen Ghoul' is consistently near the top, too. Nerf Death Knights plz k thx.

[View Remaining 5 Paragraphs]

It's nothing too earth-shattering, as far as I can make out. Some creatures associated with the Yogg Saron fight should load faster. A few items have had their stats buffed (Earthshaper, Valorous Siegebreaker Shoulderplates, and Conqueror's Siegebreaker Shoulderplates), while Leviathan's Coil had its armor cut roughly in half. Clever DKs can no longer cut their RP costs with items meant to cut mana costs, and a bug involving Leviathan MK II's Self Repair on Mimiron was fixed.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

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!

Well, you guys wanted me to run Deadmines. As you can see, I ran Deadmines. Many thanks go to Urse (Healer), Child (Tank), and Sneafoo (Noob Rogue of Doom) for 4-manning the thing with me. Urse was pretty overleveled for the place so healing was hilariously easy, but Sneafoo made up for it by starting the run at level 12 and aggroing Gruul from the pirate ship.

[Expand 4 Paragraphs]

Reader UI of the Week is back! Each week WoW.com will bring you a fresh look at reader submitted UIs. Have a screenshot of your UI you want to submit? Send your screenshots, along with info on what mods you're using, to readerui@gmail.com.

I've just been working on setting up a clean UI that still retains the look and feel of a full UI while still minimizing the amount of clutter on-screen. I'm currently running WoW @ 1920x1080 resolution. This is my first shot at designing a UI so I just wanted to toss this out there to see what people would think.

I started using Btex for the background a few weeks ago and couldn't find what I wanted so I decided to draw my own.

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

Yesterday Alex featured Cab Calloway blasting out Minnie the Moocher, a song that while was around for a long time was truly made epic by his performance with the Blues Brothers. And this lets me tie in perfectly to wish my brother Logan a happy graduation from high school next week. Logan and many of his friends were in their jazz band, and he often dressed up as the Blues Brothers when appropriate. And in lieu of that, today's reading music is the Blues Brothers' "Soul Man" performance from the 1978 SNL season. The good old days. 5 years before I was born.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

Although this comes a little late for a few players, not everybody is raiding Ulduar yet, and those that are haven't necessarily cleared it. To help appease your curiosity about what creatures lurk within the latest raid, or if you simply want to know a bit about the background of the guys that have been handing you purples recently, check out Blizzard's latest web feature, the Bosstiary.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

Just when the world seemed dark and without hope, just when it seemed like there could be no victory, just when it seemed everything that's right and good about the world would be extinguished like a match between Arthas's forefinger and thumb . . . a hero arises. And that hero is Shepiwot.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

All of the WoWenomics team members are avid cooks. Many of us cook for profit even more than we cook for our own personal needs. Accordingly, we tend to keep a pretty close eye on the prices of raw foods.

We recently found that the prices of the raw fish required to craft a Fish Feast continue to drop. They’re not dropping in a straight downward cycle but rater an up and down downward spiral. The same is true of Northern Spices all though the spices seem to hold there value a little better these days.

[View Remaining 5 Paragraphs]

Doubtless Druids all around the world are still absorbing the new-look Night Elf cat form which was announced yesterday. We know Blizzard was going for something of a colour-coded approach, trying to match skins to that of their owners but what does it all mean? Well, blue Zarhym posted on the forums this morning and went into a little more detail.

It seems that rather than being able to go 'oh I'll have the white kitty with the cut pink gem on it's collar', that your form is actually linked to your toon's physical appearance. Yes, you can easily change how your bear or cat form will look but the only was to do this, in my understanding, is by visiting a barber shop and changing the skin tone (and/or hair) of your Druid in humanoid form.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Hey! You! Scarlet Crusade girl! Take a look over here. That's right. Look at what I did to your pal with my mighty wand. This small stick of cedar and glass will be the doom of all who inhabit this chapel. Look upon me and ... oh. That's kind of a big sword. A big, sharp sword. How can you even lift it? So anyway, I'm here to make a donation to your fine ministry. Would all my gold be sufficient? Okay, I'm just going to drop it on the floor and take off. I ... uh ... left my kitchen on fire. Have a nice day!

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

As an example, I hate partially filling a talent, like going 3/5 in something. Can't stand it. I'm enough of a min/maxer that I'll still do it if I think it'll help my game appreciably, but when leveling (for instance) I'll go out of my way to avoid doing it.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Patch 3.2 Druid Forms - Preview Compilation
Below is a small compilation of all the new druid forms next to their respectives hair colors / skin tones based on the latest blue post from Zarhym. (Also, do not forget that taurens will be able to change their skin tones with this patch)



[Expand 4 Paragraphs]