There is a set of server maintenance announcements tonight from the login screen.

First and foremost, the authentication systems will be undergoing maintenance from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 5:00 a.m. PDT. While Blizzard's announcement on the issue seems rather optimistic that you'll be able to login during that time, don't count on it.

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

• The second edition of the Hearthstone Tavern podcast has gone live, this week featuring many new lore and RP segments.
• Alterac Volley is feeling the hurt of Blizzard discouraging players from going to Wintergrasp. Do you still go to Wintergrasp, even after the change to the daily quests?
• Again, we're a few days late, but all of our RPers out there should answer Anna's Friday Five!
• So... the Glyph of Disease is kind of terrible, says Runeforge Gossip.


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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).

This T-shirt from Sugarrat of Earthen Ring-US is crafting at its absolute best: a cool end product based on instructions simple enough that you could pull it off with your paws in bear form. We asked Sugarrat to send us the complete instructions and photos so we could host them here, to keep her guild's server from being splurched -- that's how popular we know this shirt will be.

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When tier 8 came around they tried to nerf our mana regeneration so that we'd finally care about overhealing and gear for mana regen as well as throughput, but it seems they didn't go far enough, at least for one class. Many Holy Paladins are still ignoring MP5 gear; in fact, the aforementioned holy pally refused to pick up most Ulduar spell plate because it all has MP5 on it and he likes his Naxx-25 stuff better.

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Bornakk says this fix was put in place to address Retribution paladins being "very prominent" in PvP, "especially in the lower Arena brackets," without hurting Ret PvE DPS. Nerfing a class based on performance in lower brackets seems a little weird to me, but whatever. We did have some rumblings that something like this was coming - a PvP nerf that doesn't affect PvE. This certainly covers those bases. It leaves Vindication a pretty lackluster talent, though. Will you still keep it in your talent spec?

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Vindication Talent Change
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)We are in the process of completing a hotfix that could go live as early as this afternoon that will make the Paladin talent Vindication no longer reduce Intelligence or Stamina from the target it is applied to. The talent will continue to reduce Agility, Spirit, and Strength as it currently does. We felt this change will help balance the ability out, especially in the lower arena brackets where they are very prominent, while not being a negative impact on a Retribution Paladin’s PvE dps.

Once this hotfix is live, the tooltip will be incorrect until we can update it in the next content patch.

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

My guild's members mostly reside in the northeastern U.S. and Canada. As such, the summer is a great season for us: barbecues, outdoor sports, beaches and lakes, hikes and bike rides -- it's a lot of fun! However, it's also the season where my guild's raiding schedule seems to hang by a thread. And this year is no different.

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Apparently there were a few Blizzard blokes at E3 last week, even though we didn't see them wandering the floor at all. Mike Morhaime and Paul Sams were both there to accept their awards for world records from Guinness after making it into the 2009 Gaming edition. World of Warcraft picked up a record for the most popular MMORPG in the world (with, as you probably know, 12 million players), and Starcraft gained recognition for being the best-selling PC strategy game, with 9.5 million copies sold worldwide. Neither of these awards are really that much of a surprise -- both games have already garnered tons of other awards, and both games are already squarely in the pantheon of the best and biggest PC games ever sold. But being recognized is always nice, we're sure.

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Well, someone has now completed all of the above steps: Snuggleme, a resto druid of Avant Garde on Kil'jaeden. Congratulations on what appears to be the world-first Val'anyr! We know exactly what it does already, but I'm still curious what it feels like to use it in a real raid - hopefully Snuggleme can give us some insight in weeks to come. Also congratulations to Impervious of Stormreaver, who collected their 30th Fragment last week on a hard-mode Yogg-Saron kill, and will be forming the hammer this week.

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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.

There's a bunch of good questions in today's Queue: gold cap (including a little extrapolation by yours truly), boss level hit cap design, and voicing of a certain King of Stormwind.

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Our podcast was so much fun last Saturday that we went even longer than usual -- this week instead of the usual hour, you get nearly an hour and ten minutes for your download (and all for the same low, low price of free!). Robin Torres and Lesley Smith joined Turpster and I to talk about what I did at E3 last week (meeting Michele Boyd was definitely a highlight), the new Druid forms and how they look, what's new in the game with 3.1.3, and some recent player achievements, including Ensidia's big win, and the no-deaths character. Plus, we talked with Robin about her recent scam experience, and how you can avoid having something like that happen to you in the future. One quick note: during the show, we guessed that Blizzard would never ask you for your Authenticator passcode, but that's not true: they do require you to give it to them when you sign in on their site. But our other tips are valid: if you make sure that you're the one typing the URL in to "blizzard.com" or "WorldofWarcraft.com," then you'll never have to worry about any sneaky sites grabbing your name and password.

And of course we answered your emails as usual -- if you have any movie posters to send in to us this week, you can send them along to theshow@wow.com. Enjoy the show, we'll see you next weekend.

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Iryzia created Candyman, a music video featuring the music by Christina Aguilera. The tip about this video comes to us from Nessa, who rightly compares it to Demachic's "Britney Belf" ouevre. And while you may or may not find Blood Elf performers "your thing," I think this is actually a great use of the models. Their elegant hair and broad movements match the genre of the song pretty well.

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No, you cannot go out for a walkie right now. I know you have to take a widdle -- I know that all too well, considering you flooded half this cell last night when you were dreaming about the Stonewrought Dam. But we have to stay in here until the Random Number Generator pulls up your name to fight a group. Then we can both get out of here, you can utilize the restroom, and I can wait until the group kills you and then finally eat your succulent hell-beast flesh. What? Oh, I said that I can wait until the group pets you and eat a succulent piece of tofu. That's right. That's what I said.

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Hot the heels of the new druid bear forms revealed last week, it was time for the cats out there to get a make over and Blizzard revealed the new Tauren look on Tuesday with Night Elves following on Thursday. Personally I think both sets look awesome and as an Alliance druid, I actually like my cat form as is. However I know an awful lot of Tauren druids have been unhappy with their pseudo-lion's lacklustre looks and there are probably some Night Elf druids out there who are little bored as well. I'm still waiting, in hope, that the equally boring travel form might see a revamp too but that's for another day.

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World first Val'anyr by Avant Garde
I think we're really done with Ulduar now! Avant Garde (Kil'jaeden-US) was the first guild to complete Val'anyr, Hammer of the Ancient Kings the mace went to Snuggleme, a happy druid.

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Sk Gaming wins MLG Columbus!
After an exciting two days here at MLG in Columbus, the World of Warcraft tournament has reached its final destination - declaring a winner.

• 1st Place: SK Gaming - $9,000 US
• 2nd Place: eMazing Gaming - $4,500 US
• 3rd Place: Ensidia - $2,250 US
• 4th Place: Complexity

We will run the stream for a few more hours while we replay all the matches, Video on Demand should also be available shortly. Thank you all for watching!

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Funny Money is a weekly column published at the end of the week with the intent to have a little fun with the world of finance. Every weekend we’ll bring you a financial quote, a song relating to money, something interesting from the real world of business and a quick WoW gold making tip. Read on and have some fun…

Money Quote

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