Every week, Zach takes you on a guided tour of the Battlegrounds, kind of like how those tour guides take you on a safari. Except that instead of boring old lions or lazy zebras on a savanna, you've got bloodthirsty, axe-wielding orcs and stubby gnomes pewpewing laser beams from their fingertips.

So you know a little bit about the Battlegrounds now. The PvP equivalent of dungeons and raids, Battlegrounds along with Arenas cater to those players who enjoy going head to head against enemy players aside from dragons, murlocs, or fires on the ground. In the past few weeks we'd gone through complete beginners' guides to Warsong Gulch, Arathi Basin, and Alterac Valley. Those were the first three Battlegrounds firmly set in Azeroth.

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Totem Talk is the column for shamans. This installment sees Matthew Rossi contemplating the incoming influx of gear and how current itemization affects shamans. Also, sorry but you get Alliance shamans this week. I can't wait until I can race change to a dwarf.

The thing is this: I hate doing gear lists.

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Dodge the drama and become that player everyone wants in their group with the Drama Mamas. Lisa Poisso and Robin Torres are real-life mamas and experienced WoW players -- and just as we don't want our precious babies to be the ones kicking and wailing on the floor of checkout lane next to the candy, neither do we want you to become known as That Guy on your server. We're taking your questions at DramaMamas (at) WoW (dot) com.

The internet is a hotbed of faux-mance. Other players seem infinitely more fascinating and attractive than the very real partners sitting just across the room, when seen through the lens of fevered imaginations. Add the spice of risqué chat, the attraction of regular time spent together and a dash of Vent and IMs, and you have the makings of the beginning of the end. Infidelity is an ugly subject, and the Drama Mamas think it's best to deal with it in the same manner we advise handling other problem situations: head on, with respect and with firmness.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is about tree sloths. Why do you do this to me? We all know it's about warriors as written by an extremely hairy man who crouches in a dark corner of his apartment muttering about block value vs block rating until his wife hits him with the hose. Matthew Rossi fears the hose.

Completely unrelated to anything even tangentially warrior in WoW: Dragon Skin Armor. We're one step closer to gigantic magical battle axes being viable in modern warfare.

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Pilgrim's Bounty ends tonight at 1 minute before midnight, server time. That means today is the last day to do the following:

• Get really frustrated fighting people for wild turkeys.
• Hit people in the head with cranberries.
• Crash the opposing faction's dinner parties.
• Coerce a druid for a chance at the Raven Lord while wearing Puritan attire.
• Go from 0 to 350+ in Cooking quickly, easily, cheaply.


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Our podcast (which is nominated for a Podcast Award, by the way -- this is the last time we'll ask you to vote for us over there, since voting ends on November 30th) is headed back to the virtual airwaves as usual, and this week we're bringing two new voices into the mix. We'll welcome not only C. Christian Moore, informally known as Colby, to the show (he's the new author of our PvP Blood Sport column), but also Kelly Aarons, informally known as Cadistra, both of WoW Eh and our brand new comic here on WoW.com. Should be a lot of fun -- they'll chat with Turpster and I about the biggest stories of the past week, including Pilgrim's Bounty and some superfast cooking leveling, the game's 5th anniversary and what things were like back when it all began, and this GDKP system everyone's using, as well as other player-created looting systems.

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Killerbees of <Ambient> on Silvermoon sends in this screenshot of a lost soul in Azshara. The sun may rise, the tide may come in, but he will remain in his lonely crystal prison, stuck in a land of perpetual autumn. Isn't there anyone around who cleans up these things? Sheez.

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Since we're now bearing down on the holidays with the fury and majesty of an 18 Wheeler, now comes a time to discuss how those special days affect your WoW play. On the one hand, a lot of people have extended time off this time of year, giving them more time to play, while others find their time taken up with family and friends celebrating and thus have less time to play.

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