Shadowmourne
Do I need to say more? Shadowmourne was datamined on test realms a few minutes ago.

• Shadowmourne Official Preview
• Shadowmourne Questline Preview


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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 leveling a rogue from level 71 to level 80.

Your goal is firmly in sight: your rogue is ready to being his or her assault upon the Lich King's lands. With only a fleeting few levels between you and the level cap, these last few minutes are among the most important in your rogue's development. With nearly every trick available and our DPS rotations fleshed out, your rogue will be feeling more and more like the level 80 you are about to become.

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The latest build on the PTR has uncovered the stats of the World of Warcraft's newest legendary weapon, the two-handed axe Shadowmourne. Apparently bandied around by random GMs on the PTR, players were able to see the highly impressive stats of this weapon, which requires an epic quest to complete. MMO-Champion also has it in its database, the entry of which can be viewed here.

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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.

Training up your spells and abilities used to be fairly complex -- not the process itself, mind you, but figuring out where to go. Trainers were tucked into obscure nooks and crannies all over the world, a real incentive to go exploring. Several infamous profession trainers were even located inside instances; you had to fight your way in, bags stuffed with all the mats for the next batch of recipes you hoped to train, and skill up like mad so you could buy the next available recipe while your group kept the area clear.

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15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

Safety is serious business on US Feathermoon (RP). The Guildwatch, Feathermoon's Alliance global defense network of guilds and individuals, strives seven days a week to protect Alliance towns and territories from Horde attack. Sound like something that's taken pretty seriously? That would be affirmative. Says Guildwatch leader Mixler of the group's some 400 members, "Most of the major players Alliance-side have been members at one point or another, all of the Horde PvPers have fought us, and I believe we're still the largest organization on Feathermoon."

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Welcome back to Know Your Lore, WoW.com's column about the story behind the game we all play.

Put simply, the Knights of the Ebon Blade are traitors to the Scourge. Like the Forsaken, they've broken free of the grasp of the Lich King due to the intercession of an external source - Sylvanas and the Forsaken escaped the Lich King's grasp when he was weakened due to the crack in the Frozen Throne and had to recall Arthas to Northrend, while the Knights were more autonomous than the average Scourge and regained their freedom following the events at Light's Hope Chapel. At LHC, the Knights were freed due to the actions of their Highlord, Darion Mograine.

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Our good friends at loot card database WoWTCGLoot.com (they've helped us out with some good contests in the past) are giving away some loot card codes of their own this week. They've put a short quiz on their site, and just for filling it out, you'll be eligible to randomly win one of twenty-three loot card codes, including a chance at an X-51 Nether Rocket mount (seen above), a Foam Sword Rack, an Imp in a Ball, or a Path of Cenarius. All of them are awesome (though, let's be honest, that rocket mount is a little cooler than the others), and all the cards work on US or EU realms, so no matter where you're reading this from, they could be yours.

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There's a distinct lack of crazy drama on the servers lately, and I think it's not necessarily because the raids are easy (guilds are still hitting hardcore achievements as they should be), but just that there's no guildbreaker raids out there right now. If you can beat ToC, you beat it, and if you can't, you can go back and do Ulduar and heroics, gear yourself up, and move on. I will say this: it seems much easier for a guildleader to avoid drama and issues later in the expansion cycle, when gear is plentiful, rather than right away.

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According to Eyonix, the background downloader for patch 3.3 will begin its work soon. There were some reports that it was turned on yesterday for a short time, when it began to deliver a roughly 450mb pre-patch file. However this time, Blizzard is turning it on for good.

Eyonix points out that the background downloader should provide a faster download than normal. Go into the preferences of the downloader and check "Don't throttle background download" to see the new speed in action. However, this option has often been known to interfere with WoW and other applications accessing the intertubes, so I recommend you only turn it on when you're not going to be doing a lot of online activity.

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The latest patch 3.3 build on the PTR has yielded tier 10 purchasing information. When players were purchasing tier 9, they had to to use badges to pick up the item level 232 iterations. But to get the next rank up, they needed badges and a token. When purchasing tier 8, all you needed was a class specific token which dropped from different bosses.

That will not be the case here. Tier 10 purchasing has been streamlined further, and I think this is the best solution as it contains elements of both tier 8 and tier 9 models.

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Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what's going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there's even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements:

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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• MrVoletron is at it again over on Youtube, coming to us with a Jaraxxus remix this time around. People have been requesting this one endlessly from the poor guy, and I must say, he did a good job with it. Utterly hilarious.
• This past week, Blog Azeroth's Shared Topic was RPG Nostalgia, with many World of Warcraft bloggers throwing in their two cents. What's yours?
• The new information released today on Icecrown access progression makes this post a little outdated, but it's a good read nonetheless: Matticus makes a case for the limited attempts approach in raiding.
• Slice and Dice teaches fledgling rogues the difference between Envenom and Eviscerate.
• OutDPS strikes again with their great hunter content, this time with a guide to timing your cooldowns.


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Apparently MSN video has now been rebranded as Bing, and that hasn't stopped The Guild from posting their latest video, but it does mean that you'll have to install Microsoft's Silverlight to watch it there. If not, you can hit up Xbox Live to watch it in HD if you happen to have one of those, or jump after the break below to watch it embedded here on the site. This week, the Guild goes to battle, with nothing less than their very existence on the line. And all of this season's other storylines move towards their finale as well, from Clara's relationship to Tink's rebellion.

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Blizzard has just released a lengthy statement on the way the new Icecrown raid in patch 3.3 will be progressively accessed. Some of the key points:

• Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live.
• The first section that opens will include the Lord Marrowgar, Lady Deathwhisper, Icecrown Gunship Battle, and Deathbringer Saurfang encounters. "Several weeks" until the next encounters become available.
• Players may not attempt any Heroic versions of 10 player encounters until they have defeated the Lich King in a 10 player raid. The same goes for 25 mans. This means no heroic Icecrown until after the Lich King is defeated, which will apparently be, at the earliest, in a couple of months.
  
• The four most difficult bosses have a limited number of attempts on them each week. Once those attempts are gone, you have to wait another week to try again.
• There will be no explicit rewards for defeating the Lich King with a specific number of attempts remaining as there was with Trial of the Grand Crusader. There will also not be an achievement to complete Icecrown Citadel without being defeated by a boss encounter, or letting a raid member die. (i.e. A Tribute to Insanity).
  
• In the weeks and months after all twelve encounters are unlocked, additional attempts against the final four boss encounters become available.
• Over time, after all bosses are defeated, players will begin to get a buff, making defeating bosses easier.

This is a jam packed statement from Blizzard on the mechanics of the raid zone, and outlines exactly what your raiding guild will be doing in the weeks and months ahead. If you are going to ever set foot in the Icecrown Citadel raid, you need to know this information.

The full statement after the break.

The full statement from Daelo:

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Giordano posted about Trev and Eroth: Desperate Measures over at Myndflame. This is just the trailer for the movie, but it has the benefit of mostly being made up from actual footage. The reason that's a big deal, if you don't already know, is that many machinima trailers use slices and snippets from in-game footage or other movies that are never actually repeated in the machinima itself. This technique is usually use to give the author a springboard into inspiration, and help them get their thoughts together.

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Icecrown Citadel Raid Access Progression
Quote from: Daelo (Source)Icecrown Citadel testing has been progressing very well over the last few weeks, and this has been a huge help to the encounter design team. We want to thank everyone who has logged onto the PTR and tried the encounters there.

As we're now getting closer to the release of 3.3.0, we wanted to talk about our plans for access progression within Icecrown Citadel. Icecrown Citadel is going to be broken up into four distinct sections: The Lower Spire, Plagueworks, Crimson Hall, and Frostwing Halls. We plan on releasing these four sections of Icecrown Citadel over time and not all immediately when patch 3.3.0 goes live. At this point we can't give precise dates for these release dates as they are determined by when patch 3.3.0 goes live. Once dates are known with more certainty, I'll update the community so they can plan appropriately.

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Standing atop the corpse of the slain Kologarn, Bozaza of <Fluffy Bunny> on Shadow Council contemplates the challenges that lie ahead in Ulduar. For example, which looks more badass, the Dragonsteel Faceplate or its Ironbark counterpart? Will she ever find anything to match the Shoulderguards of the Solemn Watch? And for the love of God, will someone please tell her that The Boreal Guard does not make her calves look big?

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So, wait a minute. If Strength on leather gear is going away in Cataclysm, how are feral druid tanks going to be itemized? Ghostcrawler's got it handled.
We talked about druids in bear form also getting AP from strength. Strength won't appear on leather and no piece should have Str and Agi together, so it's not like they would really double dip. That lets us still have tanking necks, rings and cloaks with strength on them that are attractive to all 4 tanking classes. Ghostcrawler, you machine, you. First you tell us that all of these stats are just plain goin' away in Cataclysm, and now you give us specifics? Such an industrious crab. But how is this change going to be carried out? Turns out he's got something to say about that, too.
Almost all the items in the game are going to have to change. In many cases this is just a sweeping pass we can make on all gear, such as replacing the Agi + AP on leather with just Agi. So don't worry too much about what happens with old gear and talents mixed with the new stat system. The gear and talents in many cases must change. No kidding! Looks like a lot of thought is going to have to go into re-itemizing the game. Hopefully the same amount of attention goes into our talents to go with this expansion; I can't wait to see more "fun" talents like they've been promising, stat changes notwithstanding.

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Night Elf Mohawks and Mohawk Grenades? I should know by now that Blizzard can throw a curve ball better than anyone, but the announcement of Mr. T hacking into the World of Warcraft and handing out completely whimsical, nonsensical items still caught me by surprise. Any Blizzard fan knows that humor plays a big part in their games, and WoW has been no exception -- Azeroth is rife with in-game jokes, pop culture references, puns, easter eggs, and silly items like, well, Mohawk Grenades.

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We've been giving away these Creative World of Warcraft wireless headsets for a while now, one per week to one lucky winner (and grats to those of you who've already picked them up). But Creative also wanted to work with us to do something really epic, something only WoW.com could put together. And so we're going for the whole enchilada: we're giving away a set of twenty-five (that's right, 25, one per raid member in your group) Creative World of Warcraft wireless headsets. This is going to be the clearest, most amazing sounding group on Vent ever -- not a single person in your raid will have to say "sorry, no mic."

So how do you win? Obviously an epic contest like this requires an epic entry, so here's how we're going to do it: after the break on this post, you'll find a list of five different riddles, each one hinting at a different place in the game.

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