We are quickly approaching the fifth anniversary of World of Warcraft's release (my calendar has it on the 23rd of November), and G4 has gotten a head start on celebrating -- they sent Morgan Webb over to Blizzard headquarters to talk to the team, including Tom Chilton, Alex Afrasiabi, and Jeff Kaplan, about what things have been like in the last five years since WoW's launch. There's nothing super groundbreaking in here, but there is lots of reminiscing about the game's early thinking -- Chilton talks about how dual specs were never even considered as an idea (until they, you know, were) and what things were like in the early post-launch days. Pretty stressful, sounds like.

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All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.

All the World's a Stage has been a voice for roleplaying in WoW for over two years now. I didn't quite realize it at the time, but the article entitled "So you want to be a bad guy" was just about at the 2 year mark for this column! To celebrate belatedly, today we'll review some of the other websites about roleplaying in WoW out there. If you like All the World's a Stage, you'll probably enjoy these as well.

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Ensidia, now of Tarren Mill-EU, reported today that they have captured the world-first A Tribute to Immortality. Considered to be one of the most difficult, if not most difficult, raiding achievements currently in the game, A Tribute to Immortality requires a perfect run of heroic Trial of the Crusader-25 with no player deaths and all 50 attempts remaining. The reward for pulling this off is the Crusader's Black Warhorse (Alliance version here), but I wouldn't expect to see too many of these running around in the near future.

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World first Tribute to Immortality by Ensidia
A few minutes ago, Ensidia completed the Trial of the Crusader in Heroic Mode without allowing any raid member to die on any encounter. They are the first guild in the world to complete A Tribute to Immortality, congratulations to them!

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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.

Why, oh why, are the wolves of Northshire Abbey getting sick? Has swine flu gone to the dogs? Could it be something even more cataclysmic?!

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Reader Verdus sent us a tip reminding us that this weekend is the one-year anniversary of one of the simultaneously most loved and hated events in WoW's history, the zombiepocalypse. Right around this time last year, infected crates started appearing all over the world, and that expanded out into a full-blown zombie invasion (which was so big it made it out into mainstream news). After the zombie plague had been quelled, the Scourge attacked with full force, leaving us to fall back and fight for our necrotic runes up until the expansion released. It was definitely a huge event, and now, a year later, I'm sure most of us (though not all of us) look back on it with fond memories.

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Halloween is over,
and Hallows End too.
Now it's Sunday morning;
You know what to do.

• Battlemasters: Mad Cow.
• Dark Legacy Comics: The Perfect Costume.
• The Daily Quest: Wait... That's Not A Costume....
• World of Warcraft, eh: Brings Out the Best in All of Us.
• NPC: Heal Deal.
• NPC: It's Not Easy... and Trick or Mice. Bink looks so cute!
• Teh Gladiators: Their Healer Didn't LOS Enough (Mr. Chilly Bought It).
• NoObz: Third Commandment.
• Beyond the Tree: Setting Out.
• Cru the Dwarf: Hangman.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Upset Tummies. Ah the memories....
• I seem to have forgotten LFG last week. For those of you who haven't kept up on your own, check out #297, then #298, and #299, and yes, #300.
• Have some Halloween Fail Druid.


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Feeling a little disconnected with Day of the Dead? Is your head not fitting on your neck exactly right? No, it's not because of my lame attempts at two puns right there, but it is because of a series of known issues being acknowledged by Blizzard today. The major ones are as follows:

• Macabre Marionette disappearing when changing zones (Fixed!)
• Players being disconnected when retrieving Bread of the Dead or Candy Skulls from the mail, auction house, and guild banks (Fixed!)
• The Day of the Dead costume may not last the full 12 hour duration

Blizzard doesn't want you to contact them about these issues, since the GMs can't help you with them. And while the disconnection issues, if it happens to you, could hinder your ability to complete the quests associated with the one day event -- it will not stop you from dancing with Catrina to get the achievement.

The full announcement from Blizzard after the break.

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This is the last Halloween pic for a year or so, I promise. Submitter Aaron snapped this shot of his character flying around in what appears to be Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest. Sadly, he's disregarded one of the most important rules of Halloween safety: never put a hat on a cat. His shredded corpse was found hanging in the trees west of the Bone Wastes.

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This is it, the end of Hallow's End. Let's make today's Breakfast Topic a quick one... how did your Hallow's End go? Were you able to obtain everything you needed? It took me logging on every hour on the hour (alright, on the hour when I remembered it, anyway) to get the Hallowed Helm which I didn't manage to pick up last year. Along the way, I lined my bags with an assortment of wands, loads of ridiculous masks that still didn't complete A Mask for All Occasions, and enough Tooth Picks to make a family of sharks sparkly clean. I finally got it with forty-something hours to spare, after five straight tricks from Innkeeper Gryshka.

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Because we're such nice guys, we over here at WoW.com would like to remind everyone that while the Hallow's End festivities have come to a much-too-soon end (who doesn't enjoy all of Azeroth feeling a little bit like the Undercity?), a new, very short holiday kicks off, too. Day of the Dead, literally the English translation of Dia de los Muertos, the Mexican holiday celebrated to remember those who have moved on, begins right when Hallow's End ends. The short, two-day holiday happens on November 1 and 2, coinciding with the Catholic holidays of All Saints' Day and All Soul's Day, which are celebrated elsewhere in the world.

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