Algalon-25 US First Kill by Premonition
Premonition (US-Sen'jin) got the US first kill of Algalon-25 tonight! They discovered 2 new items and the loot table has been updated accordingly, new items are highlighted in blue.


Algalon 25-Man Loot Tableth:hover {background:#d6ffb2;}tr.vloot2:hover {background:#d6ffb2;}.vloot2 {background-color:#FFFFFF;}.vloot1 {background-color:#e2fffd;}.vloot2 > td {border-bottom:1px solid #cff55f} ilvl Type Spec Slot Item

239	Daggers	Phys.DPS	One-Hand	Fang of Oblivion
239	Off-Hand	Spell Hit	Off-Hand	Cosmos
239	Shield	Tank	Off-Hand	Bulwark of Algalon
239	Staves	Phys.DPS	Two-Hand	Dreambinder
239	Crossbows	Phys.DPS	Ranged	Skyforge Crossbow
239	Daggers	Spell Hit	Main Hand	Starshard Edge
239	1H Maces	Spell MP5	Main Hand	Constellus
239	Plate	Melee.DPS	Feet	Sabatons of Lifeless Night
239	Plate	Tank	Legs	Legplates of the Endless Void
239	Leather	Phys.DPS	Wrist	Solar Bindings
239	Mail	Phys.DPS	Head	Boundless Gaze
239	Cloth	Spell	Hands	Pharos Gloves

Class Q&A Series: Shaman
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)This week we’re starting our class Q&A series with Greg “Ghostcrawler" Street and the development team. We’ll be taking a look at each class and answering some of the top questions brought forward by their communities. First up, we take a look at the most asked questions from the shaman class and find out more about the design philosophy behind the class, the expectations for the class, and what may lie in store for it in the future.

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Welcome to Wednesday in Europe. While the Americans are still sleeping and dreaming of that next boss kill, it's a brand new day and, with it, a bunch of rolling restarts to boot.

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Masi Oka plays the fan-favorite character Hiro on the television show Heroes, but that's not the only role he plays -- we've heard before that he's a big World of Warcraft player as well (which makes sense -- before his star turn on NBC's superhero show, he actually worked at Industrial Light and Magic developing water effects, so he's a geek at heart). And now he's using his MMO experience to create a movie: he's just signed a deal with Dreamworks to create a movie called "The Defenders," a family adventure about a group of teens playing an MMO who have to come together to have some adventures of their own. Both Oka and writer Gary Whitta are fans of WoW, so they're drawing on their experience in the game to put together the project. Oka tells the Hollywood Reporter that "the question came to me: What if you had to live up to the person you created in the virtual world?" He also cites The Goonies as an inspiration for the story, as an adventure that brings back an innocence found in those old Amblin Entertainment films.

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Oh, Brewfest mount. How much you have taunted me over the ages. I still recall last Brewfest, when a guildy of mine was quite distraught that he was not going to get the mount before the festival ended, only to get it on his very last Direbrew kill (and remember, we used to kill that sad dwarf five times a day). I've never gotten one myself, but that may change this upcoming Brewfest.

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Blizzard EU Community Blue Ancilorn has posted a poll over on the EU forums asking players about one of the more prickly pieces of loot in the game: Mr. Pinchy. Usually with loot, Blizzard has been pretty good lately: if there's a piece that you want, there are usually a few different ways to get it, one of which usually requires grinding (i.e. picking up tons of Badges) rather than just getting really, really lucky. But with vanity stuff, it seems like they feel free to just put us at the will of the dice roll, and almost no other pet is more random than Mr. Pinchy. Not only do you need to level fishing (which, admittedly, is much less random than it used to be), and not only do you need to fish up a random item, but then, you need to hit a random choice of five different options. It's a slim chance on a rare chance on a nearly impossible chance.

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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.

• European folks can win a trip to BlizzCon in Blizzard-EU's costume contest.
• OutDPS takes a look at the Freya encounter.
• While not strictly WoW related, many of you will like to know that D&D Online is going free to play.
• Lodur over at WoM looks and Friends and Raiders: Raider Accountability.
• Holyform writes the Complete Idiot's Guide to Discipline Priest Spells.
• Our friend Medros of All Things Azeroth has a new podcast out called Group Quest. Check it out!


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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.

We've already shown you how one WoW player got lean and mean while playing WoW. This week, we'd like to introduce you to what we think is one of the coolest new web resources for geeks and gamers seeking to uncover their inner Hugh Jackman: ShrinkGeek. ShrinkGeek is exactly what it sounds like: a fitness blog for gamers and, well, geeks.

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Mountain Dew Game Fuel, WoW-themed flavors of the popular beverage in red and blue (for the Horde and Alliance, respectively), is out in the wild, and at least one of our writers is already a big fan. To show how much they love you (or rather, to try to get you to buy their soda), Mountain Dew will give you a free in-game Battle Bot pet, just for clicking a button on their web site! The button is towards the lower-right, and it'll redirect you to log in to your Battle.net account. Don't worry, it's safe - you can tell by the Battle.net URL. He's a cute little guy. You can see a few screenshots I took in the gallery below.

Apparently you get in-game fuel for your pet, again in red or blue, and when you fuel them up, they will fight opposite colors. If you give your pet blue fuel and the guy next to you gives it red, expect some robot-on-robot fighting action. I'm not sure if you have to get the appropriate fuel for your faction, since it seems you can only get one in-game item per day, and I already got my battle bot. I'll try it tomorrow and see how it goes.

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We love in-game fixes, right?

Blizzard blue poster Bornakk has announced a couple new in-game fixes. The updates are as follows:

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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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

I've received a load of e-mails, tweets, whispers, and whatever else since Eliah posted this past weekend's WRUP. Yes, my garage burned down. No, nobody was hurt. No, the house didn't burn down, the siding just melted a little. No, that wasn't my car, it was my neighbor's car. Yes, my office has smelled like someone barbequeing since it happened and I can't get the smell to go away. I appreciate the concern, guys. You are all awesome. I guess I should pick a relevant Song of the Day, huh? How about Billy Joel's We Didn't Start the Fire?

Jack Spicer asked...

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The Hunter's Mark examined what's going on behind the Hunter talent Lock and Load a little while ago, and last week Atkallen did a follow up post getting down into the nitty gritty of the numbers a little further. Essentially, he charges that you're looking at an LnL proc for about 2-4% uptime during a four hour raid -- that is, for about 4% of the time, you've got Lock and Load giving you free Explosive Shots with no cooldown and no mana cost. And as he says, that's the "applied" time -- since LnL disappears as you use it, odds are that the real time you have it available will be much less.

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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.

Turtlehead wrote in wanting to know "what the heck casual is." This is a good question, but the answer seems to change according to the context. I learned long ago to explain how I'm defining casual for a particular article, or else face the wrath of my readers. When I write Wow, Casually, I define casual as a player with limited playtime and address my content accordingly. But there are many other kinds of players that could be called casual and we use the word to describe any or all of them. So, is it possible to define the word to please everybody? Probably not, but I'm going to try.

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Warning: There are spoilers in this review.

Story-based machinima have been a little few and far between lately, so I was incredibly excited when I first spotted The White Drake by Erunno. According to the author, he actually started the film as a method for testing the power of his new computer. Since the movie was an experiment, he opted to not use any voice acting. I think that decision worked out incredibly well for him, as the movie's silent, somber mood is only enhanced by the lack of dialogue.

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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 those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	E3 2009: A complete roundup of Massively's coverage Electronic Entertainment Expo 2009 proved to be a significant event for the gaming industry once again, with a fair amount of news and announcement related to MMOs. Massively was there on the ground for E3 this year and we've been putting up breaking announcements, interviews, and hands-on previews throughout.
	Final Fantasy XIV is a good, good thing So, unless you've been under a rock, you probably heard Sony squeeing in happiness about Final Fantasy XIV Online, otherwise known as just FFXIV. This is indeed the next MMO that Square-Enix has been hiding from prying eyes, and unlike the indications we got from the company a year ago, this is another Final Fantasy Online.
	Global Agenda trailer puts pansy elves in their place We just had a look at some of the gameplay from Global Agenda at E3, but the latest trailer from Hi-Rez studios is a bit different. It's a more humorous look at the sort of characters that will be found in-game, or rather, the sorts that won't. Walking around in a flowing robe and attempting to fling fireballs won't get you very far in Global Agenda, as the trailer points out so clearly -- a Recon character makes short work of an elf trying to fill his cast-bar to attack, proving that technology is the key to victory in this particular world, and that other elves hoping to join the game's cast need not apply.
	Star Wars: The Old Republic demonstration The trailer for Star Wars: The Old Republic blew nerds around the world away, and has managed to build some of the greatest hype possible for an MMO in just a few short days. The question has been asked whether or not a trailer which contains absolutely no gameplay footage should be producing that sort of hype, but that trailer wasn't all that we saw of the upcoming MMORPG at E3. A panel dedicated to The Old Republic had much more to say.

	Impressions of Heroes of Telara To be honest, when the Heroes of Telara trailer first released, much of what we heard was "been there done that" from readers and friends. "Fantasy has been done to death" was another. That's why we were glad to see the game actually in play behind closed doors this last week at the Trion World Network space at E3. While we only saw a pre-alpha copy of the game (and would point out that it's what they used for the trailer) it's certainly raised our interest over the initial impression we had.
	Hands on with the Aion beta Join us as we walk you through our favorite parts of the Aion closed beta. Although the first round is over, the next one has already been scheduled and we're ready!
	MMO gaming under quarantine If you're unlucky enough to be quarantined because of Influenza A(H1N1), commonly referred to in the media as "Swine flu", trying to find ways to pass the time without wrecking yourself might seem a bit elusive. Since some of us, here at Massively, are stuck in quarantine right now ourselves, it seems only fitting that we try to pass on a few useful tips.
	An Identity of Imagination... Being anonymous is par for the course when it comes to the Internet. When approaching any kind of online community for the first time, the very first given task is usually to pick a whole new name, and even without thoughts of deliberate anonymity, it can be very difficult to actually be yourself. Common real names, such as James or Mary or John or Linda, are likely to have already been chosen as login names a long time ago and the nature of the database means duplicates are rarely allowed. A more unique name is needed when signing up, and so almost everyone begins to create for themselves an online persona.
	EA and Realtime Worlds partner on All Points Bulletin We knew that Realtime Worlds, the company behind the urban crime MMO All Points Bulletin would have something to announce and show at E3 2009, we just weren't sure of what to expect. That announcement came today at the Electronic Arts press conference. Imagine our surprise when Realtime Worlds creative director Dave Jones (who you may know as the creator of GTA and Crackdown) appeared on stage to announce that EA will be publishing All Points Bulletin. The announcement was followed up with a rather stunning trailer, depicting all manner of urban badasses.

Do any of you old-school Final Fantasy types remember the spell Break? It was supposed to inflict the status "Petrify" on your enemies, turning them to stone. But just like Blind, Confuse, Doom and Toad, it never seemed to work quite as well on opponents as it worked on your character. Bonaduce of <Swords for Hire> on Quel'dorei has discovered the root of the problem. It seems that status-effect-inducing spells tend to jump through space and time to land in other games entirely. This particular petrification spell is hitting a dwarf in an Ironforge basement here in 2009, but it was really cast at a Veil Dancer in Zozo back in 1995. By me.

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As a former player of a Feral Druid main and current player of a Resto/Feral Druid alt, I was looking forward to seeing the new Night Elf Cat Form graphics with bated breath for much of the week. Of course, having now seen them, I have to say that Tauren Cat Form definitely came out on top here. Of course, some people still have their complaints about that, but I think the Night Elf forms are certainly quite a bit sillier. Oh well, at least my hair will get me a set of the slightly cooler looking forms.

But Druid fashion concerns weren't the only thing going on this week. While most servers are getting rolling restarts, others are getting some real downtime (check this post for details), and the authentication servers are taking a nap as well. That means you may just have some time to check out some more of our top stories from the past seven days below:
Hot News and Features

• The Avant Garde guild of the Kil'jaeden-US server has formed the first Val'anyr.
  
• As of last night, WoW China is down for the count while NetEase takes over. Will this finally be the end of Warcraft's Chinese woes? Time will tell.
• And the first 25-man Algalon kill goes to -- you guessed it -- Ensidia. And while it's not a first Kill, Gentlemens Club did manage to get the world first Herald of the Titans achievement.
  
• Level 1 to level 80 has now officially been done with zero deaths.
  
• Robin discussed a scam that hit her family recently, and then, surprisingly enough, heard from the scammer.
  


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Hometownkid confronts the QQ over on the forums, and wants to know why people think Blizzard is "wasting their time" when they do things like upgrade the Druid art and creating things like the Ulduar bosstiary when they could be making more quests or new PvP areas. Personally, you've never heard that argument from me -- like Hometownkid, I'm pretty sure there are different teams working on different things within the game, and it's hard to believe that one new piece of art would otherwise be a new form of quest. While Blizzard does take their sweet time, I still trust they're making new content as fast as they can.

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