Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Ulduar, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.

It happens. It's a tale as old as Hogger. In the growth and progression of a raid group, there eventually comes a time where no amount of coaching or communication can possibly hold it together and keep it going. It's not even a matter of whether or not people are right or wrong, skilled or unskilled. It's just that when you put enough years behind a raid, the people who make up that raid can grow apart.

It sounds like a horrible break up letter doesn't it? "Look," the raid leader says. "It's not you. It's us. We want different things. I think it's best if we go and raid with different people. You know. As a trial. See how it goes." And then all of a sudden, half the existing raid group has suddenly swapped off to a different server, and the other half is left to wonder what the heck happened.

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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.

• Everyone's playing guild musical chairs: Sheep Blink Invis just disbanded one of their guilds, We Fly Spitfires wants to find one, Nibuca's working on names for hers, and Hots and Dots is seeking mages for theirs. Hopefully we made at least one match in there somewhere. Good luck to you guildless folks!
• Grandpappy Frostheim says Hunters these days have no respect, I tell ya.
• Planet of the Hats has a nice long post up about "gear pollution," a growing problem in the game.
• And OutDPS tells you how to hunt for Heroic Northrend Beasts. The encounter, not the actual beasts themselves.


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Taveena recommended this one in last week's comments, so here you go. A big, bad sword.

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In lieu of providing any new information on Cataclysm in the wake of BlizzCon, Blizzard's been showing the goblin and worgen starting zones at a lot of major gaming conventions, which means a good handful of players have had the chance to try them out. Nostra from popular lorecrafting site Scrolls of Lore is one of those handfuls, and they've written up a fantastic walkthrough of the worgen starting zone, starting from your character's royal connections and subsequent infection and culminating in Deathwing's cataclysm.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com's column about how to weave colorful flower arrangements. We may also talk about warriors, to be honest I woke up this morning after about four hours of whacking gigantic undead spider things with a shield and I had no idea what my name was anymore or what I was doing. I think I may be the Kwisatz Haderach... or maybe just William Lee.

Okay, this time let me just say that the past two weeks have been kind of a small revelation for me, in that I have reluctantly done things like play a lot of Warsong Gulch and done 2v2 and 3v3 arena matches. I did these in my prot spec, which I usually consider a full PvE spec, I didn't even tweak it for PvP.

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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 will be your host today.

Normally I'm all right with birds, but this one kept murdering me in cold blood last night on my priest, even though I was several levels higher than him. I mean, there are elite magnataur out there in the same zone with one-fourth the HP of this damn bird. What do you want from me, Alystros? I pay my taxes, I vote, I volunteer at the local museum. The least you could do is cut your HP and damage by about 75% so I can convert your corpse into gold and experience.

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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.

We all come across That Guy both in-game and in person. That Guy is a bit overzealous while watching sports, picks fights at parties and/or verbally abuses people when things go wrong in a raid. That Guy is the one who thinks emulating Tokyo Rose during Alterac Valley games is a good thing. In general, That Guy can be avoided or ignored, but what if your Significant Other turns into That Guy whenever he ventures into Azeroth? Feels Single In Game writes in about this very phenomenon.

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WoW.com is looking for new writers for the weekly Spiritual Guidance and Scattered Shots class columns. Every week you will dazzle our readers with your words of wisdom covering everything from leveling guides to raid tactics to PvP strats to major patch analysis to recommended add-ons for all specs and playstyles. You don't need to play all those ways (we all need a life), but you need to be able to research and write on the topics you don't have personal experience with.

If this sounds like the chance you've been waiting for, you'll find all the information you need to apply on our applications page. Be sure to submit everything asked for. Being able to follow simple instructions is part of the job. You have until end of day, Friday, December 11th to send in your app.

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Well, I guess "big" is in the eye of the beholder, but for the fairly easy task of starting a Twitter account (if you don't already have one) and following @Warcraft, you could win a myriad of WoW TCG loot card codes. Ever wanted an Ethereal Plunderer, a Spectral Tiger, a Magic Rooster, or any of the other super-rare vanity items? Now would be a good time to take part in that whole social networking thing. You could even follow the official WoW.com Twitter account too if you're so inclined.

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A gnome-loving friend of mine dropped me a hint about this music video. Kamansus has created a fun little video called Gimme Sympathy, and it's about four minutes of unbridled cute and joy. You just have to call it a win any time you get to go on a world tour, guided each step of the way by a pink-hair gnome.

I don't know much about Metric, the band who created the song, but Kamansus did a great job for a first music video. The locations and general theme of the video seemed spot on, even if something the graphic work could use a slight nudge to get the synching just right.

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We posted about Blizzard's Warcraft anniversary minisite a while back, and since then, they've been busy, filling it up with even more content. The community interviews and the new Blizzcast haven't yet appeared, but there are many, many pictures on the Battlecry mosaic submissions section. Pages and pages of fans showing their support for the Horde or the Alliance. It's quite a sight to see, actually -- the pictures range from the straightforward to the silly to the very involved (one couple's posed up with their t-shirts and Frostmourne and logo and everything). There's quite a few whole-guild pics too. There's 43 pages total, so it's a lot to look through, but it's definitely worth a browse.

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Kajirae of <Ultima> on Ysera is mad as hell about people making fun of her bunny costume, and she's not going to take it anymore. She's been plotting her revenge, and with a little help from an Elixir of Giant Growth, soon all of Dalaran will fall under the oppressive might of her five-inch stiletto heels! Either that or she'll trip over one of the parapets, and the whole city will have fresh rabbit meat for weeks.

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In what will surely please anyone who follows or was affected by extended realm downtimes, Blizzard has quietly announced compensation for the realms affected by it last week. We covered the downtime last week as it occurred.

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I'm still working on my Chef's Hat, and there was always one cooking daily which took more time than the others: Mustard Dogs. The wild mustard is easy enough to find in the grassy areas of Dalaran, but the Rhino Meat always used to give me fits. I would fly out to Sholazar Basin and kill rhinos until I was bored which was usually right at the 4 meat mark. After whining about it in Twitter one day, multiple people replied to me with their suggestions for rhino hunting grounds, with the consensus being Borean Tundra.

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Ghostcrawler has spoken up in this thread a little bit about the balance of PvE and PvP play that we'll be seeing in the next expansion. Specifically, he says that they're slowing the pace of PvP play down a little bit: "Health pools will be much larger in Cataclysm and healing will be lower." We'll have more health overall, and healing spells will heal less. That will make a difference in PvE as well -- it'll take more hits for the boss to finish off the tank, so heal size is expected not to matter as much as healing coordination. It won't matter if your tank is up to full health as much as it matters whether or not you can help them survive the next hit.

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Icecrown 5-Man Instances trailer by Kinaesthesia
Kinaesthesia from Vodka (US-Alterac Mountains) made a nice trailer of what you will find in the 5-man instances of the Icecrown Citadel. You might want to skip it if you're concerned about spoilers, the storyline of the 5-man instances is quite interesting and you might want to discover everything by yourself.