Time once again for us to update our WoW tattoo and license plate galleries with submissions from you readers. This time around, we've got a few new updates to the tattoo gallery, including Raevyndra of Rexxar's new arm ink above, these two pieces sent in by Tonya, and Sean J.'s pretty elaborate Horde crest. If tattoos are your thing, there's definitely some cool WoW-related ink to check out in there.

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Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "A succubus is a devourer of souls, destroyer of hearts, tempter of men. A creature of profound evil and of singular mind. It cannot be brought into our world without a stimulus." ~ Gan'rul Bloodeye

Previously in 'Meet the minions' we have looked at the imp and the voidwalker as well as how to manage your minions and your threat. In this installment our demon of choice is the succubus and the game mechanic is crowd control; fear, seduce, howl, banish and a svelte demon with wings. But before I delve in I need to clarify something to Blood Pact readers.

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Simple true statement of the day: Patch 3.3 will not be released Tuesday November 24th, 2009.

Zarhym hopped on the fourms earlier this evening and said that the patch will not be dropping tomorrow, and that they don't consider dropping a patch before a long holiday weekend something they want to do. We agree.

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We had a great show this past week -- Michael Sacco jumped in via dialup from his country home to join Turpster and I to talk about the most popular stories in World of Warcraft over the past seven days. We talked about Mr. T and his mohawk grenade, how the new tier 10 system will work in patch 3.3, the beautiful axe that is Shadowmourne, and what it means for weapons coming in Cataclysm.

Plus, we answered your emails (including wishing one of our listeners a happy birthday), and we even played two operatic intros by our new friend Ethan B. I don't know anything about opera, but seems to me that dude has quite the vocal chords on him. And finally, we talked about our bid for the Podcast Awards -- we're asking you to vote for us every day until the end of the month. If we win, we'll not only give away the SleepPhones prize to one lucky listener, but we'll record a Warcraft bedtime story for them (and all of you others via mp3 download). Please vote! Thanks, enjoy the show.

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According to my sources, the Wednesday before Thanksgiving Day in the U.S. is the biggest drinking night of the year. I don't know if that's true, but if it is, that means the roads are more dangerous. So, in the interest of your safety, we are having an It came from the Blog Pilgrim Party that night.

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World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

And you thought we were done with Halloween references! We simply couldn't resist wrapping up the season with this latecomer: a young Murloc from the family of Tyrialfrozen of US Ursin. The little gurgler's mother adapted the costume from a Wal-Mart baby tiger costume pattern. Her instructions, as channeled through Tyrialfrozen:

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Patch 3.3 - PTR Build 10874
Another build is being deployed on test realms. Once again it's full of exciting and unexpected changes. (... no?)

Mounts
The Bloodbathed Frostbrood Vanquisher and Icebound Frostbrood Vanquisher are now confirmed rewards of the Glory of the Icecrown Raider (10 player) and Glory of the Icecrown Raider (25 player) achievements.

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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. Mike Sacco be your host today.

Happy fifth anniversary, everyone! In honor of such a prestigious age for our young upstart MMO, this edition of the Queue ... has ... well, basically nothing to do with the anniversary at all. I mean, it's not as if you guys asked any anniversary-related questions. So, we're just setting today's Queue to "normal view" and takin' care of business.

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Here's some good news for hunters in the next patch that I don't think we've covered on its own yet. Huntsman's Lodge points out that there are two new types of craftable epic ammo on the PTR for us to load up. Iceblade Arrows and Shatter Rounds are both learned by engineers who rep up with the Ashen Verdict, the new faction to go along with the assault on Icecrown. Both add a whopping 91.5 damage to ranged weapon DPS, and of course they're BoE, so all you'll need is an engineer buddy honored with the new guys. One catch: arrows require Gnomish engineering, and the bullets require Goblin engineering. Interesting choice by Blizzard, but it shouldn't be too big a problem, especially since mats are pretty cheap anyway (two Crystallized Shadow for the arrows and two Crystallized Earth for the bullets).

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Well now, here's an interesting thought to consider this weekend: Zemeny on Barthilas suggests that maybe it's time to do away with a gear mechanic that Blizzard has used since Diablo. He thinks that set bonuses deserve to be put out to pasture. He doesn't go into his reasoning much, but we can probably fill that in; not only do set bonuses tend to either be overpowered or too weak (as in, you usually need to have a specific set bonus to make or break a class), but they make gear choices uneven, usually leaving you to choose between an upgrade or a set bonus. Zemeny suggests we do away with the whole thing -- create one set bonus per tier, leaving upgrades for the gear itself, or just turn the set bonus into an extra gem or inscription slot and give us more power that way.

Ghostcrawler shows up in the thread and says that the game would be pretty boring if set bonuses weren't included -- I presume he means that you'd just upgrade your gear according to iLvl, and that would be that. He even says that he wishes the tiers varied more, but players really want to see "unambiguous upgrades" to their items. People need rewarding when they move up, so GC can't mix things up with the various bonuses as much as he might like.

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We're not sure what this is. Hell, we're not even sure this is about Warcraft. But it came across the @warcraft twitter this afternoon with the tag "It's Coming - 11/25."

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In celebration of today ushering in five years of WoW, let's take a step away from traditional Moviewatch material and look at some early alpha and beta footage from Stormwind and Ironforge.

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It's been five years since this game launched, and it's changed so much that you might have forgotten what life was like back then. But thanks to the magic of the Internet, those times are saved in clear HTML. Let's dig up some memories of the early game.

It's interesting to think what Blizzard was like before World of Warcraft. Today, the two are almost synonymous -- while they have two other major franchises (and one secret IP hiding in the works), it's almost impossible for anyone to think of Blizzard without thinking of WoW, and vice versa. The company has become almost solely defined by what they've done with this game. But of course, before the release, that wasn't the case.

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WoW's 5th Anniversary is still rolling and we have even more great stuff to give away to our loyal readers. This time it's a gift certificate that will give you $100 credit for merchandise ordered at Swagdog. We have 5 of those codes to give away and you can enter for a chance to win one of them.

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Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

With Patch 3.3, the new LFG interface will certainly reshape PUGs as we know (and loathe) them. This week, one reader wants to know how the new system might affect guilds.

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You'll be hearing a lot about WoW's five years today. We've done some hard work in pulling up some interesting things to show you all, and are going to start giving away some cool stuff too.

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Today is November 23rd, and that means it's the fifth anniversary of the release of World of Warcraft. That's a long time! Especially in the high-risk world of MMOs, where a bad launch can mean your whole game is doomed, or a sudden change in gameplay can make your whole audience rear up on its hind legs at you.

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In honor of World of Warcraft's 5th Anniversary today, we are kicking off three days of giveaways with one of the sweetest, shiniest, most drool-worthy prizes we could get our hands on: the ultra rare Spectral Kitten from Upper Deck's upcoming Scourgewar TCG expansion. The code from this card can be redeemed for an in-game non-combat pet called the Spectral Tiger Cub (complete with miniature armor) that follows you around playfully and meows when you click on him.

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We at WoW.com are a sentimental bunch. I always privately thought that, but now I've got the sort of ironclad proof beloved by canny blackmailers everywhere. In the weeks before WoW's 5th anniversary, a backchannel team discussion sprang up on our memories of the game and the players with whom we've had the great privilege of playing, and we decided to collect them here in honor of WoW's birthday.

Some of us are hardcore gamers with lots of experience with other games. For others, WoW was their first (and in some cases, only). Most of us raid, and some of us PvP or theorycraft. A few of us are nuts for hardware arguments, but others are surprised to discover that WoW does not actually play on our toasters. Many of us are pretty easygoing in our approach to the content; others would sell their grandmothers up the river for a server-first. One among us hates warlocks, and everyone else just hates rogues (unless you're Chase).

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US First Tribute to Immortality by Might
Might (US-Turalyon) was the first guild to complete A Tribute to Immortality on US realms, 3 weeks after Ensidia's World First. Congratulations to them!

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Every week (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW.

Once in a while, I'll get a question in the mail from a reader that goes something like this:
Dear Matt,

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