Welcome to the latest Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that is your absolute best source for all things mage. Leveling guides? Talent spec guides? Loot guides? PvP guides? Profession guides? Random, vindictive, mean-spirited, and wholly superfluous warlock-bashing? Check, check, check, check, check, and CHECK. Arcane Brilliance has all your mage needs covered.

And the leveling parade continues! Your mage is level 30 and you've grown in your mastery of the magical arts. Your Fireballs are now significantly more likely to set your enemies aflame than they are to go off in your face, you now arrive at your teleport destinations with your extremities more or less intact, and small children no longer cry at the sight of the pastries you conjure.

[Expand 10 Paragraphs]

With the Light as his strength, Gregg Reece of The Light and How to Swing It faces down the demons of the Burning Legion, the undead of the Scourge, and helps with the puppet shows at the Argent Ren Faire up in Icecrown.

Ghostcrawler has been doing a lot of talking pertaining to paladins and Blizzard's vision of them for the future. A lot of this has been spawned by some of the changes the developers have been toying around with on the public test realms. In the current build of the PTR, Lay on Hands causes Forbearance on its target which has prompted quite an uproar from the playerbase. This cuts a leg out from our two major defensive cooldowns making us choose either health or invulnerability during a fight. Holy paladins are getting some text tacked onto Sanctified Light which will allow them to reduce the chance it will cause Forbearance on others by 33/66/100% to allow it to still be useful when healing in groups. As this is the PTR, we don't really know how much of this will end up on the live realms. The developers have been toying around with several different ideas and at the moment we're not sure which one or ones they'll end up going with.

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

The WoW TCG has just finished up their year with the World Championships, but apparently they're not sitting back on their laurels -- they've just sent word that their Realm Championships will be going down November 14-15, 2009, in cities around the world like "San Diego, Philadelphia, Helsinki, Manchester (England), Singapore and Melbourne." These are invite-only tournaments, but they're always accompanied by events that are open to the public, including lots and lots of TCG playing, giveaways and door prizes, and sometimes even special realms of the online game set up for players to join. If you've never seen a TCG event and one is headed to your city, it's worth checking out.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

I was on the Patch 3.3 PTR for a few hours last night, and I have to say that I'm really impressed with the Dungeon System, Blizzard's replacement for the old LFG tool. I had a great time with the Random Dungeon feature, using it to chain-run Heroics and get extra gold and badges for doing it. But extra loot and the good feeling of a job well done aren't the only benefits you get for using the Dungeon System.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Update: - No more streams for today apparently, the boss was heavily bugged but hopefully we will see a few videos soon. More details on the encounters will be available in a few minutes.

Professor Putricide EU PTR Testing
Professor Putricide is being tested on EU PTRs tonight, the tournament streams will be disabled for the testing and will be reactivated shortly after. You can watch the tournament on Gotfrag.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

The New York Times has brought its journalistic bear to the story earlier this week about China deciding not to approve WoW's release over there under new service provider Netease, and it seems what we thought was confusion between two agencies has turned into a war. One one side, you have the General Administration of Press and Publication (GAPP), who earlier this week said that Netease (WoW's local provider of Blizzard's game in China) could not legally be collecting subscriptions on a game that GAPP hadn't yet approved. But on the other side is the Ministry of Culture, who did approve WoW's content when it was run by The9, and are now saying that GAPP "overstepped its authority" by thinking it could "penalize online gaming" at all.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Another long, tedious work-week has come and gone, leaving us two blissful, uninterrupted days to catch up on our WoW-playing. So... Torchlight? Dragon Age? Since I know we're all serious WoW junkies, these must be new zones I haven't heard of. Perhaps something on the PTR? I clearly need figure this out, as some of our writers sound really quite excited about these things. But while I work on that, why don't you read on for all of the juicy details of what the WoW.com team is up to this weekend. And if this isn't enough detail on the day-to-day existence of the WoW.com staff, you can always stalk us follow us on Twitter.

• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): We're trying to cap off Firefighter after a soul-crushing 1% wipe the other night, which will put us one step away from finally seeing Algalon. Grand Crusader Anub'arak and Algalon are the only bosses we haven't beaten in Wrath so far, so that's pretty exciting. Outside of WoW, I'm going to try getting a post or three up on my personal blog. I've been neglecting it.
• Allison Robert: Moar PvP, and with luck, getting past 1K+ resilience.
• C. Christian Moore (@TheArenaGuy): Going to do some BGs to gear up for #1. Just found a few people on my server who want it really badly and who aren't too shabby, so probably going to make a run playing rmpls in 5v5 and something with a hunter in 3v3. End of the season is probably growing close, always a great time for arena players. In real life, probably just going to work on some school work and spend time with the wife. Pretty boring weekend compared to going to the world series last week. :P
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): I'm with Alex, we cleared to Mimiron on Thursday and so Saturday is going to be Firefighter-or-bust for us, with the hopes of defeating Algalon before Icecrown is released.
• Christian Belt (@Ihatewarlocks): I'm working, but when I'm not working, I'll be playing Persona 3, because I'm about two years behind on my ever-deepening pile of unbeaten games.
• Dan O'Halloran: Currently sucked into playing the Diablo-clone Torchlight, but will sneak in some LotRO time as well my usual Friday night WoW Heroic Daily run. Desperately trying to not buy Dragon Age.
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Dragon Age has me firmly in its talons. I'm playing a Dwarf Commoner Female Rogue and having a blast. Plus I have a doggy, which is awesome. I may try to peel myself away to check the Heroic daily at the least though. I still need Oculus to get the achievement, and I'd like it before it becomes a Feat of Strength in Patch 3.3.
• Dominic Hobbs (@DMZduffry): Three raids this weekend, looking to bag more progress kills. Also getting into Dead Space despite the horrific porting to PC.
• Eddie Carrington (@Brigwyn): I will be putting on my volunteer uniform and work on getting the word out for Azeroth United's Hearts, Hands and Voices for Child's Play. During my down time, it'll be back on my main to grind out more XP. I was thinking of trying some battlegrounds. But, who am I kidding! With only 13 honorable kills to my name, I'd end up 1 dead dwarf. It's probably best stick with quest grinding.
• Eliah Hecht (@eliah): Full-time Torchlight.
• Gregg Reece: Archery practice on Saturday morning. Otherwise, I'm just going to play things by ear and see where they go.
• Lisa Poisso (@eMused): Playing my level ?? tribrid-specced momadin to support a low-level human who's leveling her music spec: Two days' worth of Fed-Ex quests, interspersed with high-DPS encounters against elite Judge bosses, who can't be pulled without bringing huge packs of un-CC-able Arena Spectators. Leads to the [Tickle the Ivories] and [Looking Sharp!] achievements. Long quest chain, lots of time on the mount. Conjuring Mana Strudel now...
• Matt Low (@mattycus): I won't be doing much healing or WoWing this weekend. Rolled a Hunter on Borderlands. Reminds me of my old competitive counterstrike days when I was terrible with the AWP. Same feeling though without the losing consequences at least! At least I know I can still hit the broad side of a barn. Also grabbed Dragon Age. Haven't set it up yet. Can't decide between Dwarf Commoner or Dwarf Noble. Probably the latter!
• Matthew Rossi (@MatthewWRossi): This week we mopped up various Achievements in Ulduar for drakes (almost there) and then I tanked Firefighter for the first time. Over the weekend I expect to be battling this stubborn fever boss. I also have a male and female character for every class and race combination in Dragon Age, which may be why I haven't gotten very far in the game yet.
• Michael Gray (@writegray): I'll be rocking out the FaerieCon vibe in Hunt Valley, MD.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): I'll do my dailies like a good druid and I'll also waste some time on Cafe World, but mostly I'll be spending any "leisure" time on my NaNoWriMo project, Tragedy in Texas. So far, my writing has been completely tragic, so the meta name for the project should be Tragedy in California. /humbled
• Zach Yonzon (@battlemasters): Getting a race change for my Death Knight, finally, and maybe spending some time with it since he won't look suave and metrosexual anymore.


[View Remaining 1 Lists]

Our podcast returns to the virtual airwaves this afternoon and if you were watching our Twitter feed this week, you'd know the big news: Christian Belt has decided to come and join us. Not that we're not fans of all of our bloggers, but he's been one of the most requested voices on the show for a while, and he's finally decided to make the jump and meet all of you through the magic of Ustream. Better not disappoint him!

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Zach loves the Battlegrounds. He loves them so much that he spends nearly all his playing time mucking around in them. He loves them so much he writes a column devoted to them. He loves it so much he makes a comic based on Battlegrounds play. You could say he eats, lives, and breathes Battlegrounds and world PvP. And maybe some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It's kind of hard to get by without doughnuts.

Alright, so you have some kind of vague idea about what a Battleground is. Basically, Battlegrounds are where players go to consensually bash each others brains out. Or fry them. Or freeze them. These instances are designed for players to enjoy PvP, get a bit of honor and, if you're not already at max level, some experience. In the future, Blizzard has revealed plans to make the Battlegrounds even more like instances or dungeons by hinting at possible actual loot rewards. It's an interesting concept we'll have to revisit sometime in the future.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

Brewmaster Urdla of <Emporium> on Lothar-EU writes in to tell us of a strange series of events that recently befell her character. "First a near-fatal teleport mishap made her dark side shine through," Urdla wrote. "Then her Orb of the Sin'dorei added some more evil female grace by turning her into one of those arcane-addicted killer Barbies. Calling her phoenix hatchling, she enjoys the ever-flowing magma streams of Ironforge. What more can a dwarf gain from the dark side?"

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

This is certainly an issue (if not a full-blown problem) in my guild, so I wouldn't be surprised if most guilds have a rough time getting guild members to use some of the outside resources they've put together. Nowadays, there are so many ways to make a guild website and so many different things you can do with one that most every guild has at least one place online to call its own. And those places are usually frequented by one or two people in the guild (usually the person running the site and/or maybe the GM and an officer or two), but in my experience, it's kind of tough to get people to use those resources, just because of lack of interest or know-how or habit. What's the point of having a database of members, a message board, and a blog and picture gallery when no one uses it?

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

It was only a matter of time before Blizzard gave us another pre-expansion gold sink, and here it is, ladies and gentlemen. Haris Pilton, Shattrath socialite, has once again started selling her limited-edition accessories, and this time she's expanded her line with the Portable Hole, a 24-slot BOE bag.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]