Back at the very end of last year, the folks at MMO-Champion did their usual excellent work in mining up a heap of models from Ulduar. Now that it's six months later, I have to ask: what happened to all of them? Take the sword pictured above. If you've raided Ulduar, you've seen this model wielded by the Twilight's Hammer cultists in the hallway to the Descent Into Madness. Why, then, is it the case that there are four 2h swords available in 10 and 25 man Ulduar and none of them use this model? Furthermore, why do all four of them in fact use the same model instead?

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A shaving of pencil lead, bark of a dead tree, the ashes of one of Kafka's short stories, bound together with a drop of writer's blood. Set it aflame, and the pact is forged! Let all who are bound by this Blood Pact be forever cursed to reconsider content distribution! Also, here's the Warlock column!

Ah, mid June. That blissful period between the end of finals, and Blizzard answering my questions. Time to sit back, unwind, and get back into my gaming and my writing. However, since I didn't spend much time in WoW during this past finals week, I found myself lacking inspiration. So, as I am wont to do now and again, I spent some time perusing the writings of my class columnist colleagues, hoping to happen upon some inspiration. And as it turned out, I stumbled across a gem of a post from the gentlemanly fellow over at Arcane Brilliance. He really is a rather dapper chap.

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Tales of the Aggronaut sent us this multipart guide he wrote on one of the things we all do in the game that might nevertheless be tough for a lot of people: actually getting a group together. It sounds like a simple thing (just ask people whether they want to group up or not), but as you probably know from experience, sometimes it can be pretty tough. So TotA set out, instead, to do a from-the-ground-up guide, from how to find and network with people in the game to how to build a group piece-by-piece.

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This is a nice piece of hefty (as in, anyone can get it, not just the top raiders) loot from Twitter's own @Wibbels. It's a sword from around level 60 with a breathtaking proc.

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I am pretty notorious for not updating my addons often enough (I think some of the versions I have must be years old by now), but maybe with this, I'll be better: Reader Fin runs a website that tracks RSS updates of addons from most of the database sites, so all you need to do is hook that feed up to your reader of choice, and then whenever a new addon drops (either one that you're waiting for, or all of them, if you just want to watch them go by), you'll see it pop up in your reader, ready for inspection or a download or whatever you like.

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BlizzCon approaches! Preparing for BlizzCon is your regular source for tips on how best to prepare for Blizzard's gaming extravaganza.

You have some time to make travel arrangements for BlizzCon, but you should be aware of your options now and be looking for deals. In general, it is best to make your reservations at least 2 weeks in advance for most carriers, but there are sometimes last minute deals and also specials run periodically. Take your time and choose wisely.

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The WoW CMs continue their polling of rare and hard-to-find items: first, we got queried on Mr. Pinchy, and now the forums have a poll about that more recent bounty, the Reins of the Green Proto-drake. As you probably already know, you have to first get exalted with the Murloc faction of the Oracles, and then you have to buy a "Mysterious Egg" once every seven days from their quartermaster... that probably hasn't yet given you the mount you want. Personally, I've gotten plenty of Aged Yolks and quite a few noncombat pets, but not my Proto-drake.

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Pink Pigtail Inn has what is probably the most involved guild anniversary I've ever seen. We've seen quite a few anniversaries and events come through Guildwatch, but this one takes the cake: a huge competitive scavenger hunt, complete with out-of-game clues, banned class abilities (so teams could be balanced out), and even self-made quests involving the guild's lore. It's probably rare to find a group of officers that can be this committed to something normally considered "an RP event," but obviously it worked out, because the whole guild really enjoyed it.

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

Over the past few days, some upcoming professions changes for Patch 3.2 have been announced, and although they are not as detailed as they could be, several of the changes will have quite an impact.

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The We Have a Tabard series is designed to help guild leaders, officers, members achieve their goals to maximize their cooperative experience.

I'm relatively new to leading a raiding guild. I've been working on building and training my team for about six months. I've been leading the recruiting and correcting members, managing raids, and in general trying to make my online family as functional as possible. It's a lot of work for one person, and no matter how much I love my guildies I have to admit that I am tired.

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Those of you who know certain past posts of mine could probably predict what my mind jumps to from that news: how will the loot be done? I see four three major possibilities.

10-normal and 25-normal drop the same gear, while 10-heroic and 25-heroic drop a tier above (10n = 25n < 10h = 25h).

10-normal drops one kind of gear, 10-heroic and 25-normal are equal to each other and better than that, and 25-heroic is best of all (10n < 10h = 25n < 25h).

All four raids drop different levels of gear, 10n < 10h < 25n < 25h.

If you've read my past stuff, you could correctly guess that #1 would be my favorite option. I don't really want to argue it here (or in the comments), because I've had that conversation more than I care to already.

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The new Chronicles of Leeroy episode 6- Stranglegank Vale has been released by Herculean Productions. If you remember from the last episode, Leeroy and friends were levelling through their first instance. Now, the Horde party must handle their most difficult challenge so far: getting ganked in Stranglethorn Vale.

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However, that's not all that turning off XP lets you do. Remember how people have been asking for classic realms with the level cap set at 60 (or 70)? Yeah, here you go. Level a guild of characters to 60, pay 10g to turn off XP gain, and raid the old world to your heart's content.

Nethaera mentioned as much in a blue post yesterday, constituting the first supportive mention of classic only raiding that Blizzard has ever made, as Adam noticed. She does mention that this may change during testing, like everything, but for now: classic content lovers, rejoice! Don't forget to loot your core hound.

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Christie of <Karma> on Alonsus-EU writes in, "You know how it is. You're happily raiding in Ulduar, you make an offbeat comment about how druid healers are all lowly scum... and then one of them hops into an Arachnopod Destroyer on the way to Mimiron and then proceeds to barbecue you alive for your impertinence. Do not anger the Trees, their vengeance is vast and terrible to behold." This particular vengeance-bringer is Restodurul, also of <Karma>.

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While traveling over the past week or so I was away from WoW. I had hoped to have at least limited access to the game but, as it turned out, I didn’t even have access to a computer. Shocking, I know. At any rate, I returned late last night and logged in for just a bit to find that, while there were no sweeping changes to the WoW economy, I felt overwhelmed with the feeling of being out of the loop and uninformed. We’ve mentioned here before that information is the single greatest tool of both the WoW and the RL trader and this theory certainly proved itself true as I was hesitant to buy or sell in any significant quantity after being gone for just one week.

Luckily, the WoWenomics team provided their daily data updates to me via e-mail so there was no loss of information. Over the weekend I’ll crunch the numbers and review with the team and we should have an analysis post up early next week. I’ll also be taking a look around the blogosphere for items to highlight for the weekend Loot Council post so feel free to e-mail or post in the comments your suggestions of posts we should take a look at. Early next week we also hope to update the site a bit- rolling our blog roll over and updating the resources page. Be sure to let us know (if you haven’t already) of any sites that should be added to (or removed from) the resources page.

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General

GC describes the mage as "the iconic caster:" deals magic damage from range. They should be versatile enough to do single-target damage, AoE damage, and crowd control, and every group should want one. (I'm noticing a trend here -- GC also described Shamans as a class every group should want. I guess every group should want all classes.)

They like the different feel between the three trees is in a good place, with Frostfire possibly providing a fourth aesthetic. They have decided that "king of AoE" is no longer a good niche to put any class in, so now they're trying to give both AoE and single-target to all DPS specs (with "extra effort" to make sure mages do good AoE).

Why has Mage seen fewer changes than other classes during Wrath? "By and large, the class works." Not that it's perfect, but it's in pretty good shape.

This is something that's never occurred to me before. GC says one thing that makes Mages unique is that each spec is centered on one spell (like Fireball). Procs and cooldowns keep this from getting boring.

Mages are still a glass cannon (compared to the other cloth classes), and they're meant to be - escape abilities should be your main way to keep alive.

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With the wiping of the official PTR forums, the release of the patch 3.2 PTR notes, and the slew of other new tidbits released yesterday, it's a sure sign that the start of patch 3.2 testing is imminent. I figured this would be a good time to find out whether you, our beloved readers, actually use the PTR (or Public Test Realm) or not.

Now I have to go on the PTR (it's written in tiny print on my WoW.com contract) but I also wander in there because I want to. I'm a journalist purely because I have no patience whatsoever and this is a great way of seeing how the next patch is going to look ahead of time. While I was initially not that excited about 3.2, some of the stuff revealed yesterday has gotten me quite excited.

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