Each week Arcane Brilliance puts on its game face and comes to play. It always gives 110% and leaves everything on the field. In fact, you might say that Arcane Brilliance just wants it more than the other team. Or something.

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Chris Caesar of the Orange County Register got to check out Blizzard's newest exhibition at the Laguna Art Museum in Laguna Beach, CA, and as you can see above, is niiiiiice. The exhibition centers around the art of World of Warcraft, and is called "WoW: An Emerging Media Phenomenon," offering up fourteen different artists' takes on the wide world of Azeroth. And it comes with swag, apparently: you pay for a certain package to come visit the show, and all the packages, starting at "Lvl 30" for $15 all the way up to "Lvl 80" for $125, come with free stuff, from an illustrated "exhibition manual" to free t-shirts and a copy of "The Art of the Trading Card Game."

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The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Netherdrakes.

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Our good friends at Massively have written up a post just for you WoW players about the new hotness in MMOs lately, a game called Free Realms. I haven't gotten a chance to play it, but it's all the team over there can talk about, and the game itself just hit a whopping three million players. It's a free-to-play game (with more premium memberships getting more features -- the minimum is about $5 a month) put out by Sony Online Entertainment that aims towards a more casual audience, with extra content placed in for more hardcore gamers. The questing and leveling itself is very forgiving -- you have a dotted green line leading you to quest targets, and combat only takes place in instanced areas. But the crafting and other various minigames (in order to do mining, you actually play a Bejewelled-style matching game, and there's even a "Kart Driver" profession) can get pretty hard. Just like WoW, those who want to collect pets or build skills can do that, while those who are more interested in dungeon crawling have that option as well.

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Arena Junkies has an appropriately-themed contest going on over at their site where they asked their community of high-rated Arena players to design their own Arena. The community was quick to whip out everything from pencils to 3D programs and came up with a pretty good selection of possible Arena maps. How good were the maps? Well, let's just say I'd take any of the submissions over the awful Ring of Valor Arena. Alright, so maybe that's not a good gauge... but it's worth going over the entries to see what creative ideas the Arena-enthusiastic community have come up with.

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We want to take a moment to remind folks that today at 5:00 p.m. PDT / 8:00 p.m. EDT is the last possible moment you have to change the names on your BlizzCon tickets.

The person who bought the tickets will receive a separate email for each ticket (sometime in the future) that will contain a barcode that must be printed off and presented with a valid photo ID at the time the tickets are picked up. That ID must match the name on the ticket, no exceptions.

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Our podcast is back on the air again today, and it's going to be a good one: not only will Turpster and I welcome back Amanda Dean, but Eddie "Brigwyn" Carrington, our newest writer here on the site, will join us to talk about his experiences blogging and playing his Hunter. And of course we'll chat about the most popular posts of the past week, including those mount and travel changes that are raising such a fuss, the Mountain Dew Battle-bots, and why an Authenticator (probably) can't steer you wrong. Plus, we'll answer your emails -- we've gotten quite a few movie posters from Turpster's suggestion last week, so stay tuned to hear about those (and you'll be able to see them here on our post next Monday).

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Summer is upon us -- and with it the promise of plenty of sunshine, occasional bouts of heatstroke, and lots of good reasons to stay indoors where it's cool and air-conditioned. (Anyway, in a couple of weeks we'll be able to enjoy all the fun of the Midsummer Fire Festival from our desks, won't we?) Our sunlight-addled brains have decided to make this week's WRUP more friendly to our friends and allies on Twitter -- sure, a lot of you follow us on @wowinsider, but if you're really into this social networking thing, maybe you'd like to stalk er, follow our writers individually. For your stalking following convenience, everyone's Twitter name is listed alongside their weekend plans. (Save for the clever, clever people who either don't use Twitter or won't confess to using Twitter.)

Onward, dear readers, into the breach! See what the WoW.com staff is up to in game this weekend -- and let us know what you're playing, too!

• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): Summer crit my raid, so we won't be doing much Ulduar until Monday. I'll probably be playing a lot of Turpen this weekend, unless Mass Effect pulls me in for a second playthrough. That game is incredible, by the way. Everyone should play it at least once. And play it as She-Shepard. He-Shepard sucks.
• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Paladin to 80 or else I'm going to throw a Twitter fit and quit the game emo style. /wrists.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): I have been tanking Ulduar for the first time this week, and so I'll likely be spending all day Saturday & Sunday dying to Mimiron.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): I'll be honest, Sims 3 has its hooks in me. I have a really cute nerd couple going, and they have a baby who's about to turn into a toddler. Dad's a best-selling fantasy fiction novelist too, so I'm hoping to get him over the edge on that as well. I figure 2 or 3 more books written and they might have the cash from royalties to move into a bigger house by the time they're ready for baby #2.
• Eddie Carrington (@brigwyn): I'll be continuing sloshing around in the snow on my quest for obtaining my Wintersaber!
• Eliah Hecht (@eliah): Driving up to Virginia for a wedding; taking advantage of it to meet a guildmate for dinner and a raid.
• Elizabeth Harper (@faience): After a week at E3 and a week of recovering from E3, I'll be remembering what it's like to play video games again. Unless I get distracted by something shiny.
• Jennie Lees (@jennielees): Well, there's nothing left to kill, so a weekend in the sun awaits. Or alt Ulduar runs.
• Lesley Smith (@LesleySmith): Depending upon how my battle with the common cold goes, I could be working, sleeping, wandering Azeroth or curled up on my sofa with feline heaters watching whatever happens to be on Sky or my new House boxset.
• Lisa Poisso (@eMused): Poking around in a beta and re-downloading an old friend.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): I will continue leveling my druid through Northrend, in between getting ganked by Alliance. I feel like Hal.
• Matt Low (@mattycus): No rest for the weary. Lots of writing and raiding to do.
• Matthew Rossi: I'm mostly working on my book this week (can I plug my other books here? :) although I'll probably be raiding Ulduar 10 at some point.
• Michael Gray: I guess I should get a Twitter account. That being said, I'm playing poker around a campfire this weekend in Frederick, MD.
• Zach Yonzon (@trymykungfu): Boy, it's a loaded weekend... free practice, time trials, and the big race on Sunday, hoping Sete Gibernau will have a successful and safe comeback to his home track at the Gran Premi Cinzano de Catalunya. Then there's Game 5 of the NBA Finals where Kobe Bryant and the Lakers look to close out a remarkable Orlando Magic. Oh, and I guess I'll probably play some of that Warcraft thing in between.


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Deathtoes of <Wrath of Honor> on Argent Dawn is attempting to live up to his name in this screenshot, as he prepares to take a leap into oblivion. Don't do it, Deathtoes! You have so much to unlive for! Of course, being a gnome, he could just be testing out whether the wings attached to his helmet are functioning or not. Gnomish engineering: a great career for those who survive.

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Bricu of WTT: [RP] put forth a pretty thought-provoking question the other day: How old are your characters? From one point of view, that's pretty simple. You do a quick /played, report back the number of days it returns, and there you go. But, especially for those of us who roleplay, it can sometimes go a bit deeper. Sometimes, we take our characters across games.

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