Another PTR build was pushed out today for patch 3.3. The item levels for the Frost level gear are 264. As always, there's a new assortment of trinkets to select from. Tanks may be interested in the Corroded Skeleton Key. Healers who don't already possess decent healing trinkets will want to pick up Purified Lunar Dust. For DPS players, you have the choice of a Herkumi War Token or Maghia's Misguided Quill. The latter is for casters due to the increase in spell power. Can't comment too much on the physical DPS trinket. That's a lot of haste.

Another interesting thing to note is that Primordial Saronite is on the vendor. I'm not sure if this will be a permanent change when it goes live. I have a feeling the Primordial Saronite is only obtainable within the Icecrown instance for crafting reasons (like Crusader Orbs).

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We've been waiting to see the end rewards for Patch 3.3's Quel'delar questline, purported to be capable weapons, and it looks like this latest build revealed the stats for all of the weapon's incarnations.

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This is finally it -- your last chance as a single commenter to pick yourself up a Creative World of Warcraft wireless gaming headset. We've been giving one of these away every single week for a few months now, and today we've finally run out of the single headsets, so here's your last chance to leave a comment on this post and win one on your own.

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More and more guilds are becoming just like Zen, above -- they're downing Anub in Trial of the Crusader, and then wondering just what's next? The answer, of course, is Icecrown, but even our best estimates have that release a month away still. Not that anyone's blaming Blizzard yet -- quite a few guilds are still working on hard modes, and more people are worried just what'll happen after Icecrown (though I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard still has a few cards up their sleeve for that one). But still, at this point, guilds are reaching their limits, and we're starting to see the calm before the storm of raiding in patch 3.3.

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Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about the armor penetration and crit caps, and what they mean for rogues.

The topic of Armor Penetration and how it plays into a rogue's gearing plan is definitely the topic I've received the most requests to cover. It's been well-researched by the great folks at Elitist Jerks, and even though it will be completely gone in Cataclysm, there's still a lot of interest in how it works. The terms 'hard cap', 'soft cap', and 'arp cap' are thrown around a lot and can be confusing if you've never done a deep-dive into the mechanic.

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Icecrown Citadel Raid Loot
The raid instance has been itemized as well and this news will be updated throughout the night.

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Quel'delar Quest Rewards
The rewards for the Quel'Delar questline will be known in a few minutes. This post will be updated as soon as possible.

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Update #3 - 5-Man Items are on the way ... Quel'Delar, Might of the Faithful
Update #2 - Oops, fixed another stupid error. This time we're good.
Update - Fixed a stupid error. Let's all pretend it wasn't here. 5-Man dungeons items are also here and will be available "soon"

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Patch 3.3 - PTR Build 10805
A new build has been deployed on PTRs, stay tuned for more changes!

Mounts
2 Frostbrood Mounts ? Smells like Glory of the Icecrown Raider ... But at this time the rewards on the achievements are still placeholders, wait & see.

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A new round of updated PTR patch notes have been released this afternoon for patch 3.3. There's only one update, but it's a large and important one for the folks on the PTR:

• General: Halls of Reflection in Icecrown Citadel available for testing. All three wings of the 5-player dungeon are currently available for testing.

Halls of Reflection is the third and final wing of the 5-man dungeons opening up in Patch 3.3. These dungeons, including the Pit of Saron and the Forge of Souls will offer the best 5-man loot currently available in the game. When they're combined with the new dungeon matchmaking system, everyone should be quite happy to run them as often as they want.

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Serthida has posted a set of pictures that serve as a perfect reminder of the Raid for the Cure coming up this weekend: she's finished the pink moonkin plushie that they're going to be giving away in the raffle (with the winner chosen from donations to the Susan G. Komen for the Cure foundation). We've collected them in an easy-to-browse gallery below for your perusing pleasure.

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Rawr is a great third-party app (it's open source, and doesn't interface with the game at all) that's designed to help you figure out everything you need to know about your character, including how to best buff, enchant, and gem up your gear and set up your stats for whatever you'd like to do. It started out as an app strictly for tanking druids, but recently, it's grown to include pretty much all classes and stats. Our good friends at sister site Download Squad just recently found out about it, and they've got a nice basic writeup posted that servers as a good overview if you've never used the app before.

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Followers of the official Warcraft Twitter will recall that Blizzard ran a contest some months back using the #Battlecry hashtag, encouraging players to tweet a message for either the Alliance or the Horde depending on the background of their Twitter page. It was a pretty cool promotion and was a great social media activity for fans, who proudly showed their World of Warcraft allegiances throughout the contest period.

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New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. Visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide for links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's.

Last week, we talked about how add-ons add zing to your game, and we explained how to download and install them. We hope you spent time poking around some of the major mod sites and found some things that caught your eye -- but if not, we're back to fill you in on some of different types of mods along with some of the most popular add-ons that will streamline and enhance your game experience.

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Today's video is a fan trailer for the upcoming patch 3.3. You might have heard of it. A few million screaming Alliance and Horde are going to kick down the door to Icecrown Citadel and have a few words with the Lich King. Those words will probably be things like "Oh, god, my face!" and "Not the bees!"

This patch 3.3 fanmade trailer doesn't use game footage or new voice acting. Instead, Daneimp went into the archives from previous Warcraft games and strung together a series of official Blizzard cinematics. He's basically outlining the story in a montage of Arthas moments.

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Zubon of Kill Ten Rats has been playing through Northrend lately, and it sounds like he's right around where my paladin is: working through the Wrathgate questline. The zombie invasion was the most important kickoff event for this expansion, but especially with what we've been seeing of Icecrown (spoilers there) lately, it looks like the events that went down at Angrathar might be the defining moments of Wrath of the Lich King. So much we're seeing in Icecrown and even beyond seems to be debris spinning off of the clash in that cinematic.

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

Let's get meta here folks. Zetathran asked a question about the history of this site, and it got me into a conversation with our Editor-in-Chief Liz Harper about the activities of old. WoW.com has a changed a lot in the past few years, and while the long dialog we had about past policies and editorial standards is probably of no interest but ourselves, the basic story of the site probably is, so we'll start off with that.

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Horray! Another update to the patch 3.3 PTR patch notes. This one is nice and small. Usually, when the note updates become smaller and smaller, it's a good indication that the patch is getting closer to being done. But, we also haven't seen any itemization of this patch yet -- so there is obviously still a bit of work to do. However even then, items don't exactly change very much in the PTR, they are mostly set via formulas devised well ahead of time. So we'll see... nice to see things shaping up though.

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In an unexpected and strange twist in Blizzard's latest microtransaction saga, the Pandaren Monk vanity pet has apparently sold out on the Blizzard pet store. A mere week after the in-game pets were announced for sale on Blizzard's new pet store, the Pandaren Monk can no longer be purchased on US realms (as of this writing, it is still available on the Blizzard EU and Blizzard KR stores).

That the Pandaren Monk would sell out comes as a surprise because, well, it's a virtual item. It's like Agent Smith. It never runs out. Unless, of course, Blizzard designed it that way, in which case there must have been a massive failure of communication somewhere down the line because it doesn't say anything about the Pandaren Monk being a limited item anywhere. It's also notable that Blizzard had committed to donating 50% of all proceeds from Pandaren Monk sales to the Make-a-Wish Foundation all the way through December 31. If the Pandaren Monk were to disappear, it should at least be expected to last until the end of 2009, right?

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Tatjana knew that her marriage to the Drakkari troll would never be accepted by her small, rural werewolf community. Ever since her sister ran off with a tauren druid and gave birth to a jackalope, her family had literally kept her on a tight leash. So the couple's only option was a daring elopement on horseback. The village guards would come after her, but she knew that they wouldn't follow very far. And then she and her husband would be free to have all the furry, tusked, blue babies that they wanted. (Thanks to Asmodeius of <Busch League> on Bloodscalp for the pic.)
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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Azeroth is Uniting to Support Child’s Play!
A few days ago I received a mail from Stompalina of Rawrcast about the 1st annual Azeroth United. Don't forget that every dollar count, you can easily donate by using the ChipIn widget below. (Payments are made through Paypal)

Rawrcast: World of Warcraft Podcast - 60-day World of Warcraft Game Card

Sideshow and Syrana – 30-day World of Warcraft Game Card and 2009 Blizzcon Authenticator

Unbearably Hot – Custom, one of a kind, handmade bracelet themed after the Hearts, Hands, and Voices charity event. Sure to be a Blizzcon conversation starter!

3point.com: Warcraft Stein - Artwork by amazing World of Warcraft illustrator James Zhang.

Raid Warning Podcast: Steel Series World of Warcraft Gaming Mouse

SwagDog: 3ea. $100 Gift Certificates and Weekly 25% Off Codes for all contributors. You can get your code from your favorite Azeroth United Unity Member.

J!NX Clothing Company - $25 Gift Card, Talking Murloc Plush Toy, and J!NX Keychain

Ten (10) Hearts Giveaways - As a “Thank You” for your $10 donation to Child’s Play, you will be entered into the Filled Hearts Giveaway where TEN lucky contributors will WIN a gift basket filled with donations from these sponsors…

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Cataclysm's coming, but thankfully you appear to have a bit of time left in Wrath's lifespan to decide how you're gonna tackle the expansion first. Me, I haven't decided yet. I want to level my shaman to 85 first -- maybe even go for realm first shaman/draenei if I've got the time and inclination -- or go for broke and level the hell out of a worgen in New Azeroth.

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If you checked the most recent Patch 3.3 PTR patch notes, a comparison of spells would show that Blizzard has reduced a lot of spells' cooldowns by a notable amount. This makes a significant impact on the playing environment on numerous levels, as most of these spells on long cooldowns were long considered to be powerful abilities whose use were once thought situational.

These shorter cooldowns will see more abilities in play, figuring more into dungeons, questing, or world PvP. Most of these abilities still won't see action in Arenas, where the allowable spells have been limited to abilities with cooldowns below ten minutes (down from fifteen). The change appears to be a direct result of many spell cooldowns being reduced.

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Wondering why you can't log into the game? Mr. Chilly knows why. It's because you spurned him. He was ready to be your bestest bud, and look what you did. You missed the deadline to get Mr. Chilly express-delivered to your mailbox by merging your WoW account into a Battle.net account. You had all the time in the world. You made Mr. Chilly cry. And now you can't even log in! Serves you right!

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