Each week Arcane Brilliance celebrates Independence Day in its own special way. Most people celebrate the 4th of July by setting off explosive devices of varying sizes. In similar fashion, Arcane Brilliance also enjoys blowing things up. The difference is that whereas most people tend to set off pretty fireworks, Arcane Brilliance prefers to cause Warlocks to explode. The result isn't nearly as pretty, but to Arcane Brilliance, it has its own very unique charm.

I don't know if you're trying out the patch 3.2 PTR or not, but if you are, you should go out and mess with Living Bomb. Like, right now. Go cast it on some things. That's right, I said things with an "s" on the end. As in plural. As in more than one thing. Watch those things burn to death simultaneously. Rejoice.

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

Over the past few weeks, Insider Trader has been discussing and analyzing the changes to professions set to go live with patch 3.2:

• Patch 3.2 Profession Change Analysis takes an in-depth look at the early announcements.
• Patch 3.2 Q&A answers questions being asked in the WoW community.
  
• Recently, a rather large list of Patch 3.2 Engineering Changes was released.

This week's column will be devoted to updating you on some of the newer changes, clarifying as many details as possible, and analyzing some of those juicy Engineering changes.

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As the holiday weekend rolled around, we started to get a number of tips that Hunters were successfully training themselves a...Worgen pet? Worgen?!? How was this level of cool allowed into the game without anyone knowing about it until now?

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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.

Holidays are for all players, of course, but I think they are particularly appropriate for players with limited playtime. Sure, there are often raiding quests or achievements that we can't complete, but overall, the activities seem to be designed for casual gameplay. For the most part, I think I'm preaching to the choir, here. But every once in a while, I read comments from people who just don't get holidays and avoid them completely. So here is my sales pitch about why every casual player should give each holiday a try.

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Is it just me, or have we had lots of EU-only contests lately? First, Lesley gives away some loot cards for the EU, and then Turpster gives away some more. This is July 4th, and it's about time we served the North American side of the globe! (Canada, we missed Canada Day, so we'll throw you in the mix, too). Courtesy of our good friends over at WoWTCGLoot.com (be sure to visit them if you need to know anything about the TCG Loot cards), let's give away some loot codes!

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Another week has come and gone again, leaving us stranded in yet another weekend (and a holiday weekend for many of us, at that). How are we ever going to kill the time until Monday? By spending some time in Azeroth! So what's everyone playing this weekend? The WoW.com team will get the conversation started, so to see what we're up to -- and tell us what you're up to! -- in game this weekend, read on!

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): Is this the real life? Is this just fantasy? Caught in a land side. No escape from reality. (Which means I'm playing my Mage/Druid Horde dualbox toons).
• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): It finally seems like I'll get some time to dig into leveling Turpen again, so that's what I'll be doing in between raids, 4th of July celebrations, and working.
• Amanda Miller: Going after Yogg once again. I might try to fit in a farming session or two.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@Danielwhitcomb): I've been bitten by the bug to level my Blood Elf Paladin for some reason, so I'm working on him. He also only needs to kill Ahune for Flame Keeper, so I'll see if I can grab that for him as well. Oh yeah, I can also mention that I am gonna start my weight loss regimen this weekend in the geekiest way possible -- with Dance Dance Revolution.
• Eddie Carrington (@Brigwyn): Another no WoW weekend for me. I'll be flying cross country to the Philly FP on the 4th and flying back home on the 5th. At least I got the Flightpoints. Otherwise it would be worse than trying to run from Darnassus to Ironforge at level 10 before WoTLK came out.
• Elizabeth Wachowski: Continuing my hiatus from WoW, I will be playing Fallout 3, Prototype, and Final Fantasy Tactics.
• Lisa Poisso (@eMused): We are celebrating my daughter's new Midsummer Fire dress by, ummm, not wearing it and staying offline for the weekend. ;)
• Mark Turpin (@The_T): I'll be leveling up some Warlocks, got till the end of the month till my RAF runs out, just got these warlocks and then some Druids to level up and then I'll have all the classes to 60.
• Matt Low (@mattycus): Farming mad badges and preparing for epic gems. Everyone's expected to replace all blue quality gems with epic ones when they're available. That means Naxx. Fun!
• Matthew Rossi: Leveling another DK through Outland, I usually seem to peter out around level 72 for some reason, we'll see if this one makes it.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): This weekend includes the zoo and a birthday party, so I'm not sure how many alts I can get through their level appropriate Midsummer achievements. I've also been distracted by taking in-game videos -- we'll see if anything comes of that.
• Zach Yonzon (@trymykungfu): Busy making travel arrangements for BlizzCon in August on top of working on my personal site, business, and a long-forestalled comic project. Which means it's an awful time to dust off my Shaman, whom I thought would finally get some love and get to 80. Back to the shelf with you, Troll!


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Over 200 years ago, our forefathers put forth a document that not only declared the Independence of one of the greatest nations in the world, but also sundered the connection between the old country of Great Britain and the new United States of America. Now, all this time later, Turpster and I do the WoW Insider Show together, and basically undo all that work those smart guys did way back when. This week we'll have an especially good one, as Adam Holisky, Alex Ziebart, and Michael "Belfaire" Sacco are all coming on the show all together. Just in case you thought they were all the same person (some sort of former Blizzard CM/blog posting/contributing editor maniac), we'll prove you wrong.

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It's that time of year again -- Summer is in the air, baseball is well underway (I'm still pulling for the Cubs, even though it's a rollercoaster as usual), and things are grilling on the, um, grill. Here in America, today is Independence Day, and we're celebrating our independence from you EU folks -- don't take it personally, but we'd had it up to here with your taxation without representation, and we just wanted to spend some time on our own for a while. So while most of our bloggers are relaxing and lighting explosives on fire, posting might be a little slim around here today. Just in case you need something to read, you can always catch up on all the amazing Patch 3.2 details, dream about going to BlizzCon (or just ogle the costumes), or finish up your Midsummer Fire Festival achievements.

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Note to all you Americanos out there -- be careful with your Independence Day fireworks! Otherwise you'll end up like Bilirubin of Daggerspine, disintegrated so thoroughly that the only thing left behind is your confused, jawless spirit, wondering what on earth just happened. Either that or you'll survive to explain to me and the other EMTs why you thought it was a good idea to operate a homemade mortar launcher after drinking a twelve-pack of Coors Light. The disintegrating-into-dust option would probably be more pleasant.

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As I said the other day, we've talked about the dumbed-down argument quite a few times before, but I think this is the first time I've ever heard the opposite argument put forth so succinctly: Tadaa asks, over on the forums, "Is WoW getting too complex?" Longtime players will probably say no at first glance -- the game has been streamlined a lot since it first game out, and things that took up much of your time previously (tracking quests, looking up quest targets, dealing with respecs, and finding groups) now have systems built into the game that let you get past them easily. But think of what it would be like to step into Azeroth nowadays -- instead of just a chat channel where you can find groups, there's a whole system with terms like "damage" and "tank" in there. On first glance, it might be tough to figure out. And then there's things like resilience and Replenishment (which some experienced players don't even fully understand), and even things we think of as helpful features (getting pets and currency out of our inventory) can be super confusing for new players: where did that pet go that I just clicked on, or that badge that I just saw looted to me in the combat window?

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