Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we cross our fingers and hope there are more fights like the gunship battle up ahead.

Hail, druids. I'll be continuing a look at Balance gear whenever the gear lists on Wowhead start behaving themselves (down, boy!), which I sincerely hope is going to start happening soon. Right now they're kind of a mess post-patch. In the meantime, I've been able to return to raiding with the benefit of a new computer, and the guild stomped through Icecrown Citadel last night (with, as I previously vowed, Jaina Proudmoore's coin in my packs because it is awesome and lore-appropriate and I could not be a bigger nerd).

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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.

Patch 3.3, the Fall of the Lich King, is finally here, and you know what that means! Well, I mean, hopefully it means questions for the Queue that haven't been asked a million times before, or questions about new content.

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People who were worried that creating Shadowmourne, the legendary two-handed axe, would be double the grind that Val'anyr was might want to relax a little, as the official WoW Armory just clued us in as to where and how often the Shadowfrost Shards necessary to craft it drop.

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Business Management has a really interesting graphic up (that they say came partly from Eurogamer.net, but I didn't see it over there) that breaks down WoW "by the numbers." It features an interesting series of stats about the game, in what I call an Oatmeal-style format, everything from number of players and items (30,000) to number of locations (1400) and the most commonly looted item every day (Frostweave). I think these stats all came from a few different places -- from a talk given at Austin GDC last year, to the toplist over on the official WoW site (of course, that chart is constantly updated, so Onyxia wasn't always the deadliest mob, and Frostweave wasn't always the most looted.

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Our friend Kevin Kelly over at the Joystiq mothership got a chance to talk to Frank Pearce at Blizzard about the Warcraft anniversary, and he did us proud. Not only did Frank Pearce do some nice reminiscing about Blizzard, where they've come from, and how the massive World of Warcraft undertaking has changed them as a company (they've gone from 500 employees to about 4,000 in just the last five years), but he also touched on some issues we've really been wondering about over here at WoW.com as well.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to Round Two of the five-man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

It's getting tighter in here ... This week brings together Chrono-Lord Epoch (The Culling of Stratholme) and Xevozz (Violet Hold). Epoch comes to the Thunderdome after defeating Prince Taldaram back in August, while Xevozz earns his berth courtesy of a win against Ionar.

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Well, they started giving away pets for having an authenticator, so I guess it's about time I went ahead and put one on my account. I've had the app on my iPhone for a while, actually, but I never really saw the point in attaching it to my account, especially since it seemed like just more hassle, and who knows what kinds of errors could pop up. And honestly, I haven't worried much about hackers -- I use a secure browser, I don't click on unknown links. But I know, I know, it's safer, and with the cute Corehound Pup out, I might as well go ahead and attach it.

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T for Thunderfury is the epic tale of Baron Soosdon's quest to get Thunderfury for his paladin. When he finally managed this epic feat, needless to say, there was a party.

This video has a similar epic, awesome feel to many of Soosdon's videos. And while it's not technically a machinima, I still enjoyed the camera work and music. Soosdon's just kind of got that flair, and could probably find ways to make an entertaining movie out of a watermelon in a bucket.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is WoW.com's coverage of all things clanky and angry. Matthew Rossi decided he would give PuGGing another try last night with the advent of patch 3.3 and the new random dungeon interface. He choose...poorly.

What I really dislike is when someone tells me something which could not possibly be true and expects me to believe it.

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Instance servers down? No problem. The solution to any dilemma is to apply enough force to the weakest point and see what breaks. The intrepid adventurers of the Argent Dawn server didn't let server instability and lag keep them from charging headfirst into the entrance to the Forge of Souls. I wonder if those swirly portals hurt when you bang your head into them? (Thanks to submitter Frodrick of <The Ashwood Chronicles> on Argent Dawn.)

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Neth has posted an announcement for Blizzard's annual dessert contest, and... wait, dessert contest? I don't remember them doing that one before, but sure enough, they have. I guess it follows after the pumpkin carving contest. Anyway, yes, your task, should you choose to accept it, is to make a confectionary creation based on one of Blizzard's big franchises, and submit a picture of it to them over on the site. Each of ten winners will get seven different Warcraft books, including the popular Rise of the Horde and Arthas novels. You have until December 21st at midnight, so get cooking!

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Once upon a time, a long time ago, in a world... in a land... there was a zone-specific Looking For Group channel. Then Blizzard saw fit to make it realm-wide so that no matter where you were -- whether questing or gathering or hanging out in big cities -- you could have a channel to make group requests to anyone in your faction not in an instance.

The unintended, though easily foreseen, consequence was that Barrens/Elwynn chat spread to all zones like a plague. And Blizzard took it away, eventually, claiming that it was adding functionality by stuffing it in their new (at the time) LFG functionality. Some protested and created their own LFG channels, but most were satisfied to keep it in the big cities and take it to Tradechat, transforming it forever.

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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. This season's combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.

King Ymiron raised his weary head long enough this week to send Mal'ganis packing, with a 60% to 36% defeat of the dreadlord in the Two Bosses Thunderdome. The spectators seemed somewhat restless ("This would have to be one of the most boring fights to watch," muttered t0xic. "Sorta like a resto druid duel."), although we suppose that could have been some pre-patch malaise creeping in.

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Blizzard poster Bornakk announced a whole batch of hotfixes and updates to issues that cropped up after the launch of Patch 3.3 earlier this evening. A few of the juicier fixes are just below, and you can find the rest behind the cut.

• Running up the ramp at the end of the 3rd encounter in Halls of Reflection will no longer disconnect players.
• Onyxia has settled down and is once again killable and flying in the proper areas during phase 2.
• Bosses no longer respawn in the new Frozen Halls 5 player dungeon after being defeated.


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Recent In-Game Fixes - Decmeber 2009 - 12/9
Quote from: Bornakk (Source)Listed below are recent fixes we have applied to the game. Keep in mind that some of these changes may not be active until after the realm has been restarted.

To review previous in-game fixes, please visit: http://forums.worldofwarcraft.com/thread.html?topicId=20677858456&sid=1

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