Reader comments – ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Some readers will undoubtedly consider a discussion of Alizee and the female Night Elf dance to be beating a dead horse – but that's not actually the topic that the title of this week's [1.Local] is referring to. The dead ponies come later. (Didn't Mama always tell you to save the sweet treats for last? Mmmm, crunchy on the outside, soft in the middle ...) This week, we start out with one lucky reader's story of the Night Elf dance -- wedding style.

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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.

Ickmon from Executus is a 2200+ ranked Priest, working in both the 2v2 and 3v3 brackets. The changes to Arena rating requirements, Resilience, and balance in patch 3.2, however, could mean a lot of big changes for Arena players like Ickmon. Despite the uncertainty of change, though, this Priest isn't particularly worried about the changes -- he thinks that things will be fine, and the new Resilience benefit might be a good thing.

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The Loot Council is regular column highlighting interesting and informative posts from around the WoW finance blogosphere.

Here is a quick selection of interesting WoW finance articles from around the web over the past few weeks:

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All the World's a Stage brings you the latest ideas and suggestions about roleplaying in the World of Warcraft.

One of the greatest problems people have with roleplaying in WoW is that the game has a tendency to spread people out all over Azeroth working towards disparate goals, and that makes it hard to sustain a roleplaying environment. Roleplayers can gather together in a meeting place of some sort in order to roleplay, but doing this every time isn't feasible -- inevitably, we want to go questing, get loot, and actually play the game too, all in different places.

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Totem Talk is our weekly look at all things shaman. Matthew Rossi would like to remind any readers with screenshots of their Horde shamans to email them to matthew.rossi@wow.com and not put them in the comments, where he is likely to forget they exist. In addition to being extremely hairy, he is somewhat ponderous in his recall.

The past couple of weeks have been exciting with Q&A's to analyze and PTR changes to consider. It's been easy for me to forget that I left our round-up of mail drops in Uldar half-way through the 25 man items. One of the things I forgot to gripe about as much as I really should have last time we discussed Ulduar mail is the complete and utter lack of mail boots for elemental shamans in the instance. As of the last time I checked, there are three pairs of boots in Ulduar 25: two enhancement, (yes yes, I suppose hunters might use them too) and one mostly suited to restoration shamans. And I covered all three pairs of boots last time anyway.

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Mr. Daniels: This is punishment, gentlemen, not party time.
Logan: Well, that would explain the absence of balloon animals.
-- Veronica Mars, "The Girl Next Door."

Heresy! A Veronica Mars quote rather than Firefly. Eh, who cares, it's a holiday weekend, so we're wild and crazy. We're continuing our march through Glory of the Hero, and today we're going to tackle the first of Wrath's "halls," the Halls of Lightning. Before we do, here's a round-up of what we've done previously in the OverAchiever: GotH series:

• Part I: Ahn'kahet
  
• Part II: Azjol-Nerub and Culling of Stratholme
  
• Part III: Drak'Tharon Keep
• Part IV: Gun'drak

HALLS OF LIGHTNING

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It's Sunday, the 5th of July, and somehow I think that some of you guys are either traveling, sleeping in, or "mysteriously" a little ill. This one's dedicated to all of you. I hope you had a happy Fourth of July, and here's a quickie to enjoy before you realize that today is the last day of the Midsummer Fire Festival and you never did get around to finishing those achievements.

• Cru the Dwarf: A Pile of Dried Plums.
• Dark Legacy Comics: On the Run.
• GU Comics: If the Armor Fits.
• On Experience Points, Victor finds a way to solve his problem.
• Flintlocke vs. the Horde.
• Check out the latest from LFG.
• NoObz: Crafting.
• NPC: Time Spent and 17 Pound Catfish.
• Teh Gladiators.
• World of Warcraft, eh?: Girls Just Wanna Have Fun. I agree with the comments, there are some great facial expressions in this one! Plus, a pretty cool bikini.
  


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The latest installment of Walhtor of The Underbog's "Series of Embarassingly Avoidable Deaths" is available for purchase. Entitled Drowning in Shallow Water, it features Walhtor's bloated, humiliated corpse drifting pathetically under the waves. It joins previous offerings Fell Off Teldrassil While Auto-Running, Accidentally Right-Clicked the Horde Flight Master, and Went AFK in Contested Territory and Was Slowly Beaten to Death by a Level 15.

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With the Azeroth-shaking announcement of paid faction changes, it seems like one of the last barriers to character re-customization have been broken down. Who would have thought that we could switch allegiances four years ago? The World of Warcraft has certainly come a long way since it launched. One of the big changes back then was allowing players to transfer realms -- initially disallowing PvE-to-PvP transfers but that restriction was eventually lifted. That was shocking news then, but then Blizzard opened the door for names and even gender changes.

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Patch 3.2 Companion Pets
This patch will have its share of new companion pets and most of them have been discovered on PTRs now.

Oracle / Wolvar Orphans
Curious Wolvar Pup and Curious Oracle Hatchling are the new pet rewards for the Children's Week. These orphans have their own questlines in Northrend

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