Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

You know, Archdruid Fandouche Toolhelm Fandral Staghelm sure does ask for a lot of Morrowgrain ... So what's up with that?

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The Colosseum takes us inside the world of the Gladiator (Brutal, Vengeful, Merciless, Furious, and otherwise), to interview some of the top Arena fighters in the battlegroups. Our goal is to bring a better understanding of the strategy, makeup, and work that goes into dueling it out for fame, fortune, and Frostwyrms. We're especially focused on the people who play these games, to further shed light on the world of the PvP player.

Celestior of Mal'Ganis is the mage member of LOL YOU MAD, the 1st ranked 5v5 team on the Stormstrike battlegroup. His 2v2 team is currently ranked 19th, and his 3v3 team is ranked 56th. This all adds up to a mage that probably knows his PvP-fu.

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World of Warcraft and Philosophy got released a little while back -- it's a book by Luke Cuddy and John Nordlinger that examines WoW-related topics like roleplaying and the Corrupted Blood plague, and ties them into philsophical ideas and thinking. TechFlash has now posted an interview with Nordlinger, and it's a good read as well. Nordlinger says that one reason they chose to talk about World of Warcraft in this way is that it's so incredibly big -- when you have 12 million (give or take a few at this point) people playing a game with a GDP larger than some smaller nations, you're going to touch on all sorts of interesting ethical, moral, and other philosophical ideas. He says the book has been pretty popular, and a few universities are currently considering teaching courses based on the material, not only because it's interesting, but thinking about the game in this way helps improve abstract thinking in general.

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Hot on the heels of a much larger achievement we've recently covered (Twenty-Five Tabards), I've decided to do The Keymaster in this article for two reasons:

I recently watched Ghostbusters.

Do I need another reason?

Actually, the other reason is that if you've done Twenty-Five Tabards, Keymaster is usually pretty easy because you've likely got some Burning Crusade faction rep under your belt. I could tack on a third -- I'm constantly surprised at the number of players who aren't keyed for some of the old-world dungeons, and by "surprised," possibly I mean "irritated," because I keep getting pestered to go open doors. Happily, just about all of these keys can be soloed at 80 for most classes, and none of them are particularly time-intensive (with the possible exception of the Scholomance key due to insane travel time) to get.

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All I can say is, "Mmm, gnome brain."

• Dark Legacy Comics: Gnome Brain.
• Teh Gladiators: They Come to Disturb Our Peace.
• NPC: Asil's Question. Kitties never learn though do they? Appreciation. I especially love this next one: Ahem.
• Daily Quests: Hell Hath No Fury.
• LFG #307 and #308.
• Dungeons and Draenei: 2012 WoW.
• Beyond the Tree: An Unfriendly Reception.
• Check out the latest from Slash AFK.
• Complex Actions: The homepage has their latest one. So far, I can't figure out how to make a permalink to their latest comic until it becomes the second-latest comic.
• WoW eh: What Have You Done.
• Battlemasters: A Fine Mess.


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Has this feature suddenly been turned into Around Arkham Asylum? Not quite, although I might be game for an Around Rapture feature sometime in mid-February. This max-distance shot of the mage quarters in Stormwind, submitted by Wrezolution of Twilight's Hammer-EU, is indeed startlingly reminiscent of something you'd see while dressed in a cape and hanging upside-down from a gargoyle. Watch out when you glide kick, though -- it's a heck of a long way to the ground here.

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All of the recent discussion surrounding what people are planning for their Worgen and Goblin characters got me to thinking about the ingame races that just don't get that kind of love. It's no secret that certain race/class combinations are underplayed (witness, for example, the ingame hell of finding a Dwarf or Orc rogue for Turkey Lurkey), but some races are just massively underplayed, period. If Warcraft Realms is at least ballpark accurate, then Humans are roughly 5 times as popular as Gnomes, Dwarves, and Trolls at 80. Draenei are twice as popular at 80 as Gnomes and Dwarves, and Blood Elves have a chokehold on the Hordeside population. Zardoz's Armory Data Mining (fast becoming one of my favorite WoW sites) did a breakdown on class, race, and gender populations as of November 4th, and the results are pretty illuminating. In case you're wondering, Dwarves, Orcs, and Tauren are the least likely to be female, and Draenei, Blood Elves, and Night Elves the most likely (although Draenei are the only race in the game to have a female majority). The most played combination in the game is the Blood Elf paladin, and the least-played are the Dwarf rogue (I for one am shocked) and the Troll warrior.

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WoW Cataclysm @ Dreamhack
As you probably know, the Dreamhack Winter 2009 was held in Jönköping this week and people could play Cataclysm here. I never had a chance to post in-game footage of Cataclysm in the past and I thought it was a good occasion to do it since "someone" was nice enough to provide decent footage with a decent (=not too awful) quality, thanks to him/her/it.

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