Halls of Reflection, the 5-man in which we're going to face down Arthas (finally -- we've been waiting for this moment since the end of Warcraft III) is now live on the PTR, and the staff of WoW.com is going to head on in there to see what there is to see. And you get to watch -- we'll be streaming our run of the brand new 5-man this Friday afternoon, starting at noon Pacific / 3pm Eastern. We'll be live on our Ustream page, with full in-game video and commentary from yours truly, as five intrepid WoW.com bloggers go and see what the Wrath of the Lich King really looks like.

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Blizzard has made it a holiday tradition to release a holiday card every year (usually drawn by Samwise), but this year they're putting a little twist on it. They're running a contest asking the potential artists among you to submit your own original Blizzard-themed holiday card. Download their template, fill it up with Diablo, Starcraft, or Warcraft-related holiday art (no Lost Vikings or Rock N' Roll Racing art, apparently), submit it on the contest page before December 7th, and you can win a whole slew of prizes from Blizzard and Razer, including a mouse, keyboard, and headset, as well as a signed copy of Blizzard's 2009 holiday card from Samwise himself.

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digg_url = 'http://digg.com/gaming_news/BlizzCon_2010_July_in_Las_Vegas'; According to the Las Vegas Convention Center website, Blizzard will be holding BlizzCon 2010 in Las Vegas July 30th and 31st. Upon inquiry, the Convention Center was able to verify the dates and that Blizzard is running the event. However, Blizzard has yet to announce this themselves. We have contact Blizzard, and we'll post anything they have to say on the matter.

BlizzCon is the major fan convention for all of Blizzard's games. Past BlizzCons have launched all the WoW expansions, including Cataclysm this last August. BlizzCon 2009 had approximately 20,000 attendees. According to the Convention Center's website, BlizzCon 2010 will be bringing in 30,000 people.

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Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, the weekly World of Warcraft Hunter class column. This week we wrap up our "So you want to be a hunter" leveling series as we look at Levels 71-80 and see what makes up the best class in the game. So join me, Eddie Carrington, Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge blog and podcast, as we explore what's in store for us hunters.

Hey gang! Welcome to the last installment of the "So you want to be a hunter" leveling series. It's been a long and windy path through grassy plains, sweltering tropics, and fractured planets to finally end up in the frozen wastes of Northrend as we prepare to face the Lich King and hope to get a flying horse when PTR Patch 3.3 is dropped.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

This week's match in the Two Bosses Thunderdome makes the healer in me cringe: Gal'darah (Gundrak) versus Loken (Halls of Lightning). Gal'darah steps into the Thunderdome on the laurels of a solid 68.4 percent victory in his last battle against Moorabi. However fearsome his reputation, Loken creeps into the ring as an underdog, having lost his most recent battle against Anub'arak and subsequently re-earning a berth through the reader vote that brought back three vanquished combatants.

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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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

For the curious, the original title of today's edition of The Queue was "The Queue: Adam if you skip me and write a Queue today I'm going to shiv you IRL because I'm seriously not still asleep and will have it written in a couple of hours." Luckily, he didn't skip me, so he gets to live another day.

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Blizzard updated the launcher again today without warning and hopefully without incident -- unlike Monday, when everything went awry, errors abounded and people were unable to connect.

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Queen Lana'thel / Rotface EU PTR Testing
Queen Lana'thel will be tested on european PTRs tonight. Stay tuned for streams, abilities, loot, and chocolate chipped cookies.

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It probably makes me sound like the biggest fanboy ever to say so, but I think that Cranius may be my favorite musical performer right now. Something appeals to me about the emotion and earnestness he brings to his music, and the interesting arrangements he creates in each song. His work is unique and compelling, and I look forward to each new song he produces. That's why it's so exciting to see Legs and Cranius release The Story.

Just like in Wrought, Legs has again managed to create a compelling story in the machinima. Each tableau and action fits Cranius's music perfectly. There's really absolutely nothing negative I could say about her work in The Story. Hell, it's so good I'm probably going to put this video up on the overhead at my own wedding. When my fiancee and I finished watching it, we both D'awwwwed-out-loud.

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Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the world of the death knight from WoW.com's resident undead slave, Daniel Whitcomb.

While we're not strictly a pet class, per se, no-one can deny that we probably have the largest menagerie outside of Hunters and Warlocks, depending on how we're specced. It could stand to be a bit more diverse (where's my glyph of the geist, Blizzard?), and it could stand to smell a bit nicer, but it does the job quite admirably. As a long time lover of the use of death knight pets, I've decided that this week is as good as any other to take a peek at those pets, both the common and the talented.

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Totem Talk, the column for shamans, finishes up its roundup/overview/update (it's all these things and more!) of shaman leveling with a look at what you'll be doing once you get off the boat to Northrend. Matthew Rossi is tired now, but would like to thank Steve again for the screenshot accompanying today's article.

And so we arrive at Northrend, able to take the quests and explore the new zones. We've talked about faction rewards and instance gearing for shamans in Northrend before, and for the most part that still holds true. Here's a look back at the posts about the various five man instances and zone rewards:

• Dragonblight and Azjol-Nerub
• Grizzly Hills, Zul'Drak, and the Troll instances
• CoT Stratholme and Halls of Stone/Lightning
• Utgarde Keep, the Oculus (spelled correctly, but really, if I misspelled it what's Sacco gonna do, arm wrestle me? We all know how that would go) and the heroic versions of Utgarde Pinnacle/The Nexus.

The only real changes in terms of 5 man instances are the introduction of Trial of the Champion and Heroic TotC, and to my astonishment I've never done a gear list for shamans from TotC. That really is kind of astonishing. It's possible I simply lost track since I was in the middle of a vast discussion of Ulduar gear when TotC was on the horizon, but it's still a pretty big oversight. With another set of new five mans dropping alongside the Icecrown raid in patch 3.3, TotC/Heroic TotC 5 are instances any new 80 should be running to get geared up in anticipation of 3.3. So we'll talk about that gear today.

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At his drake's request, Amathyst of <The Stormwind Reserve> on Barthilas rode up to visit Alexstrasza and introduce her to one of her many children. Unfortunately for Amathyst's mount, it turns out he inherited most of his characteristics from his much less impressive father. This reminds me of a pit bull/basset hound mix I once met. It would have been a very intimidating guard dog were it not for the fact that it didn't come up to my knees and preferred crashing into people's ankles to attacking them.

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Yesterday's Breakfast Topic asked about the new Alliance race, but today we're here to ask about the prodigal Hordies, Cataclysm's newest Horde race, the goblins. The announcement of the race was a bit of a surprise, but one that made a lot of sense upon further examination. I wasn't at all excited for goblins at first, but the more I look at 'em, the more I kinda like 'em -- especially all of the cute hairstyles that the women get.

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Patch 3.3 has been out on the PTR for about a month and a half now, and we've seen a ton of changes that will significantly alter the way the game is played. Everything from the cross-server LFG system, to the highly anticipated confrontation with Arthas.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

How crazy does crazy get? Keristrasza's brand of crazy was mind-numbing enough to drop her from the skies in this week's Two Bosses Thunderdome. Eregos maintained the upper hand with a full 50% of the vote in this week's fantasy deathmatch.

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A 7-minute YouTube clip pieces together sound files mined from the latest build of Patch 3.3 PTR. The sound files feature the Lich King delivering lines from Icecrown Citadel 5-man and raid dungeons, as well as the Shadowmourne quest line. These files are filled with spoilers, so readers who wish to keep everything a surprise should steer clear of continuing on. The video is embedded after the jump. Again, be warned that these files are full of spoilers!

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