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

• Wildstorm has hired a new artist to create #20 in the World of Warcraft comic book series. BlizzPlanet has the low down, along with a sample image.
• No Stock UI takes a look at the Taeo UI Compilation.
• Skeleton Jack is back, and this time covering the 10 Best in Slot Death Knight Bracers.
• 4Healz shows how you can Use Recount to its Full Potential.
• Rolling Hots studies the Resto Druid Gems in Patch 3.2.


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I had concerns when Blizzard first announced the way bosses would be unlocked in Patch 3.2's new raid instance, the Argent Coliseum. Blizzard has announced that while the first boss is available immediately, other bosses will be unlocked week-by-week. It's not the first time an artificial barrier has been put up for raid progression -- hello Sunwell -- so I guess I'm not shocked by it, but progression wasn't really what I was concerned about.

In our current raiding system, each boss drops a pre-determined set of loot. Some bosses drop a token which can be turned in for a piece of armor matching that particular slot, and the boss will always drop this same slot token. Thorim will always drop a shoulder token in Ulduar 10, for example.

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Man, what a crazy news day this has been, and the day's not even over yet. Blizzard just rolled out a new PTR build, so we took a quick trip to the Patch 3.2 PTR and discovered a whole new mechanic that Blizzard hasn't mentioned yet. It's yet another change to how raiding works, and it's pretty cool.

We killed Venoxis in Zul'Gurub and, upon being saved to the instance, noticed that we now had the option to extend our raid lockout -- that is, to make it last twice as long or until the next week's lockout would end.

This means that, if your casual guild is a scrappy bunch working on Ulduar, but you can only get to Mimiron each week before the lockout expires, you can extend your current lockout into the following week to get more practice on the bosses you don't get to see as often.

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As previously reported, there were accusations that US guild Exodus used an exploit to obtain the World First of the last unclaimed Hard Mode in Ulduar -- Alone in the Darkness. As it turns out, these accusations were true and blue poster Daelo posted on the official forums that the Yogg-Saron encounter was hotfixed on all servers to prevent this from happening in the future. Owing to this, Exodus' kill is no longer recognized by some achievement trackers.

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Once again, we have maintenance off the port bow. You'd almost think this is a weekly scheduled thing, eh?

This week, though, is one of those special extended maintenance weeks, with servers down from 3 AM to 11 AM Pacific. No, despite the extended maintenance, we aren't expecting patch 3.2 yet.

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The Patch 3.2 PTR Patch Notes from the official sites have been updated this evening. There are a few notable changes, and you can read the full new patch notes after the break.

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Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a new UI and addons blog for WoW. A brief look at the tier 9 sets and the origins of those who it is named after: Velen and Zabra Hexx.

We're getting more news as the weeks go by. Last week, tier 9 information was released. As some of you may know, the upcoming Crusader's Coliseum is slated to drop tier 9 items. All classes are getting three levels of the latest tier. I'm assuming one set drops from normal (10-man), heroic (25-man), and heroic hard mode.

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Gold farmers! They're everywhere, right? We get spammed by them, we run into them farming Dire Maul, we put them on ignore. Lazy people with too much disposable income buy gold from them in a show of crass consumerism. Blizzard has done their best to stamp out gold-farming services, but litigation is difficult due to the fact that most of the major gold-farming companies are based in China or other parts of Asia. They've instead opted to try to control and stop gold farmers from being able to complete transactions via other methods.

This time, though, it looks like Blizzard may have an unlikely ally in, of all things, the Chinese government. They announced today that the trading of virtual goods for real money is now illegal in China. This ruling reaches farther than just gold farming, though. It also bans the sale of prepaid time cards for MMOs or other online games, as well as numerous technicalities we're sure to hear about in the weeks to come.

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We reported last week that a guild named Exodus on the US realm of Ysondre had come out of nowhere to topple the world first of the Heroic: Alone in the Darkness achievement, which requires that you bring down the biggest bad currently in the game, Yogg-Saron, with no help from any of the Keepers in Ulduar. But not so fast, says Serennia over at WoWRiot -- over on their forums Ensidia is claiming that Exodus used an exploit, and that their kill doesn't count at all. Apparently, having Thorim help on the fight keeps the "Immortal Guardians" in the last phase of the fight from being a problem, and without Thorim, you have to not only do the fight without his extra 10% damage bonus (each Keeper ups your DPS that much), but you have to deal with the Guardians messing up your melee classes, and oh yeah: they both heal and get healed by Yogg. Not that it's impossible to do it, but it's definitely not easy, and Ensidia claims that Exodus found a known exploit that allows you to evade the Guardians out completely, thus turning the last phase into a straight tank-and-spank, obviously much easier.

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Update - A new Build has been deployed on PTRs, see below and stay tuned for more changes!

Faction-Change Service in the Works
Quote from: Nethaera (Source)We wanted to give everyone a very early heads-up that, in response to player requests, we’re developing a new service for World of Warcraft that will allow players to change their faction from Alliance to Horde or Horde to Alliance. There’s still much work to do and many details to iron out, but the basic idea is that players will be able to use the service to transform an existing character into a roughly equivalent character of the opposing faction on the same realm. Players who ended up creating and leveling up characters on the opposite factions from their friends have been asking for this type of functionality for some time, and we’re pleased to be getting closer to being able to deliver it.

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Hunters, patch 3.2 also means a new spirit beast for you to obsessively tame. Once again Mania's Arcania proves itself to be the go-to site for information about new pets. Since I know I'm going to be spending a lot of time wandering around looking for this new pet model, here's the skinny: there will be a new spirit beast in patch 3.2, it's name is Skoll and unlike the current spirit beasts Loque'nahak and Gondria, this one uses a saberworg model (the new Northrend worg model introduced in Wrath of the Lich King). It's still a spirit beast with prowl and spirit strike.

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As if the Engineering changes today weren't enough for you, Nethaera has just announced a major bombshell:

Blizzard is implementing a faction switching service.

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

This weekend marked the end of an era, my friends. A champion (cheater) of the people (Gnomes) has fallen from grace (the thumbnails at the top of our site). The people (you guys) have shouted to the rooftops (our comments), "Down with oppression (martial arts techniques)! Down with corruption (GM lewts)!"

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The Patch 3.2 PTR has been updated to a new build, and the set bonuses for many Tier 9 sets have been changed or updated. In the update, they made the priest set bonuses not terrible! And the updated Elemental shaman ones aren't terrible now either!

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PTR Maintenance - 6/29/09
The PTRs are down for maintenance, we will possibly see a new build of Patch 3.2 deployed on PTRs tonight. Stay tuned!
Quote from: Dresorull (Source)We will be bringing down the PTR servers at approximately 1:30pm PST for maintenance.

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We went live with the WoW Insider Show yet again last Saturday, and this one was a good one: not only did Turpster and Lesley Smith join us, but we were also graced with the presence of Michelle Madison, of the podcasts Warcraft Outsiders and Video Game Outsiders. She was kind enough to make it past all of our inside jokes (she agreed it was prounounced "Fah-jord," which is as it should be) and mixed it up with some great discussion, including about the Midsummer Fire Festival, the new Tier 9 gear coming to the game (and the lore figures they named it after), and whether including quest objectives on the official map dumbs things down too much (spoiler: we basically said no).

It was an excellent show, and you can tune in to hear it by following any of the links below, or subscribing to our feed right over on iTunes itself (that guarantees you get the new shows every single Monday). We'll be back next week as always, so be sure to tune back in then.

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Ahh the smell of fresh loot in the air, it must be summer. Well, fans of loot cards and the official Trading Card Game, I bet you have your calendar marked. Tomorrow sees the release of the latest - and possibly greatest - TCG expansion Fields of Honor. Yes, you too could have your very own El Pollo Grande, the greatest mount in the entire history of Azeroth. We've mentioned this thing was rarer than a spectral tiger's tooth, right? Indeed our very own Turpster has been raving about his (insert slightly rude giant chicken joke here) all week.

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Zarhym has just released some major Engineering changes for the upcoming Patch 3.2. These changes are a long time coming for those of the Engineering profession, and many folks will be quite pleased by them. There are 19 total changes that Zarhym announced – that's quite a lot for any patch.

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

A little healthy competition among your raiders can be a good thing. It encourages people to push to play their best, to show up completely prepared, and to gem and enchant their gear with the most effective possible options. A bit of banter can enliven your raids and ease the tension when your run is struggling. But what if your players take it too far? What if their drive for personal accomplishment becomes detrimental to your raid? This week's e-mail asks how to handle two healers -- and officers -- who are turning their personal competition into public drama.

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I'm an admitted and proud fishing junkie, but had long ago resigned myself to the fact that my favorite ingame pasttime was never going to be a source of revenue. But Alterac Volley has a great post on the degree to which fishing has actually (gasp, shock, horror) become a moneymaking endeavor in Wrath. While I'll grant that on most servers it's probably nothing compared to, say, Mining or Herbalism, there's gold to be made in them there streams -- and this is all the more true if your server hosts a large raiding population.

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself by contacting our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) -- not-for-profit work only, please.

Is there somewhere in game that feels like home to your character? Reader Asphydel's characters hail from Pinky Street – literally. Pinky Street is a line of four-inch anime figurines that come with interchangeable parts, allowing you to create trendy, custom figures with your own look. The line encourages customizations, from swapping out parts and accessories to adding entirely new paint jobs.

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We featured the previous installment of Baron Soosdon's PvE movie series back in December 2008. Now, seven months later, the good Baron has released Raid Together, Die Alone 3. The video is a series of clips, raid fights, and other moments blended together against the backdrop of Soosdon's usual good taste in music. The good Baron warns that an absolute ton of murlocs were harmed in the process of making the video, though I'll be darned if I could find them.

Ultimately, this new Raid Together, Die Alone is another fun memoir video. It brings back memories of slamming our faces into Illidan Stormrage and the epic awesome that is the Eye of Eternity's unique setting. As WoW progresses forward with new content and new bosses, it's easy to forget to look back and fondly remember some of the things we've already done together. I think Raid Together, Die Alone is a fun scrapbook of WoW-to-date, and I'm thankful for the reminder.

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Hey! Watch it, dog. If you're thinking of doing to me what I saw you do to those other bushes near the wall, you better think twice. I'm dual-specced, baby. All I need is to cast Insect Swarm, Typhoon, and Wrath, and I've just given you the three things you fear most -- fleas, a bath, and an anesthesia-free neutering. (Thanks to Grza of <Karma Delivery Service> on Zangarmarsh for this pic from Naxx!)

Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We'd love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next!

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Hey there WoW.com readers! You're probably wondering who the hell this guy is. And by this guy, I mean me. I'm a writer over at Joystiq, where we sometimes jealously watch all the fun stuff our sword and spell-wielding counterparts over here get to do. Luckily, and only by means of geographical location and the fact that they were showing off Starcraft 2, I got a chance to tour the Blzzard campus and take a lot of snaps if you know that I mean. Wink wink, nudge nudge.

These will be featured in a story over on Joystiq at some point today, but in the meantime here's a sneak preview just for WoW.com readers. You may already know about Blizzard's massive courtyard Orc statue that's in the process of being installed in the front of the main building, but you might not know about the tenets engraved on each of the eight compass points that tout Blizzard's mottos. There's a peek at all of 'em in the gallery below, and they're also listed just beyond the break.

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It looks like we've got a sneak peek at what may be the new tier sets when MMO Champion uncovered some gear intended for Paladins, Death Knights, and Warriors. Just in case you didn't notice, that's all plate gear and, well, they all look alike. With Patch 3.2 seeing the return of faction-specific armor, a lot of people were thrilled except that most players (including myself) sort of forgot that faction-specific gear such as the old Level 60 PvP sets had shared models across armor types.

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Upcoming Isle of Conquest Changes
Quote from: Zarhym (Source)Based on player feedback and testing, we will be making several changes to Isle of Conquest in the next test realm build. We'd like to lay them out for you here in the hopes we're able to encourage continued participation and feedback.

• Increased all the gates' health from 300,000 to 600,000.
• Increased the reinforcement count from 200 to 400.
• Significantly increased the health and damage of the keep generals.


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Yogg-Saron +0 World First Kill by Exodus
Today, Exodus (US-Ysondre) finally took down the last undefeated hard mode of Ulduar : Alone in the Darkness (25 player)! Congratulations to them.

As we suspected, the extra loot you get for beating Yogg-Saron in the hardest mode is nothing less than Mimiron's Head.

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Argent Coliseum Armor Sets (Tier 9?) Models Preview
I didn't notice them at first but the first PTR build of Patch 3.2 was shipped with a few models of new armors. I will not claim that they are Tier 9 armors because the naming scheme of the model files was changed but it wouldn't be surprising if it was indeed the T9 models.

Only the Plate version for the alliance is available for the moment. I know for sure that they're sets for different classes because the textures are clearly named after each class, see the file list.

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Season 7 Armor Sets Sneak Peek
After yesterday's preview of PvE sets, it's time to let you take a look at the Arena Season 7 Armor sets.

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I know there is a lot of talk on the forums about the World First Kill of Yogg+0 by Exodus a few days ago. If the kill was indeed made by using an exploit we will probably hear about it from Blizzard soon, just wait a few more days and try to be nice on forums.

5-Man Instance: Trial of the Champion Boss Preview - Achievements
The Trial of the Champion is the new 5-Man instance introduced with Patch 3.2. It will most likely take place in the Argent Coliseum and will let you face the Champions of each race depending on your faction.

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I know there is a lot of talk on the forums about the World First Kill of Yogg+0 by Exodus a few days ago. If the kill was indeed made by using an exploit we will probably hear about it from Blizzard soon, just wait a few more days and try to be nice on forums.

5-Man Instance: Trial of the Champion Boss Preview - Achievements
The Trial of the Champion is the new 5-Man instance introduced with Patch 3.2. It will most likely take place in the Argent Coliseum and will let you face the Champions of each race depending on your faction.

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