Blizzard's community team is working like crazy before the holidays -- just a few days after the dessert contest kicked off, they've now announced a screenshot contest, this one centering on "The Rise and Fall of the Lich King." Basically, they want you to take a screenshot of your character somehow fighting the Scourge, and in return, they're giving away 11 steins. Ten lucky winners will pick up Rise of the Lich King steins from Taverncraft, and one lucky grand prize winner will win the #1 of 750 out of the limited quantity of signed Legendary Collection Rise of the Lich King steins released. That's actually pretty awesome -- I haven't been enticed to buy a stein yet, but I will definitely submit a screenshot to win one.

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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.

• The Pink Pigtail Inn is collecting nominations for a "list of the year," picking the best in a few different categories from the World of Warcraft in 2009. Go leave a nom for their awards, and then come back here -- we'll have our own year-end list of top stories as well.
• Kinless Chronicles has not had such a great experience with the Dungeon Finder so far. Low level DPS might be out of luck on finding groups fast.
• Tank Like a Girl examines some good tanking gear in the new Frozen Halls 5-mans.
• And while Alliance pride is hard to find, Kimberly D knows exactly why she's Horde.


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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 is just awesome. The new Dungeon Finder means that not only are you able to run dungeons faster and easier than ever, but you also get the dubious honor of running into any of the myriad crazy people that play this game. Some of those crazy people are me (see above). And, for somebody else, the crazy people might just be you.

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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.

Been devouring all the articles at WoW.com designed to help you dig into this week's new content patch? Obviously, we have too -- but not everyone feels that way. There are quite a few players out there who'd like nothing more than to work their own way through the new content in a little peace and quiet.

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Ravius over at Kill Ten Rats ruminates on the importance of reputation in these very social games that we're playing with each other, and it resonated with me in terms of a few different things going on in World of Warcraft right now. We've talked lots before about ninjas and how that back-and-forth works -- in that case, karma is directly driven by what other people think of you, and of course that's seen more weakly in lots of other places around the game, including guild recruitment, your friends list, and just the general server at large.

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Ghostcrawler has dropped information on the forums about a few incoming hotfixes to patch 3.3. The first three changes are posted over on the DPS role forum:

• Hunger for Blood will increase damage by 10% instead of 15%. Assassination rogues needed damage, but they got too much, and this will bring them back. Sorry rogues -- the tooltip, we're also told, might not change right away.
• Scourge Strike will crit only once, not on the shadow portion of the damage. "This change just proved to be too bursty in PvP and provide too much sustained damage in raids." He also gives lots more explanation of the change on the forums -- this one will be discussed quite a bit.
• Rolling Corruptions will no longer use the initial haste value indefinitely. More of a bugfix than a change, says GC -- the haste value should drop out to normal after a few ticks of the spell.


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Blizzard has added some nice new features to the World of Warcraft Armory, including a few players have been asking for in the past. The most exciting change is something that doesn't seem to be working quite correctly yet -- they're including a Flash-based model viewer for characters that will let you see what a toon looks like without ever logging into the game. So says their updates page, but as of this writing, the whole system is going up and down, and we couldn't get it to work correctly on any of our PCs. Should be done soon, though.

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Mindor asked us to please do a caster staff this week, so here's one you can go find in the new Frozen Halls instances this weekend.

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To borrow a line from Monty Python: "And now for something completely different." This movie was suggested to me by Baron Soosdon, and it definitely wins this week's prize for "most random video." Get On My Horse (WoW Edition) is a cover of the Weebls video, Get On My Horse.

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Patch 3.3 has been out for two days now, and we're starting to see lots of reactions to the various new encounters pour in. Drawing from bloggers' posts, forum threads, and the reactions of a random sampling of players I've pugged with (the new LFG system is great), this is a short gloss on what I'm seeing so far:

• Forge of Souls is the easiest of the new 5-mans. The most common gripe is that group members don't pay attention to their raid warnings and move in as necessary for Bronjahm, or stop DPS on Devourer of Souls if they get Mirrored Soul.
• Pit of Saron is pretty cool, though quite sad at the end (at least if you're Horde). The trash pulls full of casters are on the tough side if people aren't good about interrupting or moving out of Hellfire on heroic. Also, don't bank on getting Don't Look Up in a pug.


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You may laugh at their clumsy movements and indelicate hooves, but one day when the Burning Legion attacks again and the Draenei mothership comes back and beams up all the goat-people, you'll be sorry. Don't worry, though. The Draenei will look kindly down on those of you left behind. They'll be eating popcorn and laughing as you're forced to mine sulfur for twenty-three hours a day by whip-wielding Legion demons. (Thanks to Grae of Feathermoon for the pic!)

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Oxhorn has released a very special Christmas album focused on his WoW-themed music, called Oxhorn's Christmas for Geeks. The album is available both on Amazon and iTunes. Heck, you can even pick it up on Rhapsody and Napster. Oxhorn was pretty thorough to make sure that you could get the album by whichever route you like.

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Let's face it: with rare exceptions, good or bad Pick Up Group dungeon experiences usually have very little to do with the dungeon itself. Last night, for instance, I dropped in on two back to back PuGs as a tank and had solid runs in both cases. But the first run was a silent zerg fest that was only notable in its grim, stormtrooper like efficiency as we basically chain pulled the entire Nexus in silence. Admittedly, as tank, I set the pace, but no one complained as I charged from pack of mobs to next pack of mobs, never stopping for mana and saying nothing. It was as if five inexorable gods had come to visit doom upon the poor inhabitants of Malygos' once-proud fortress. Keristraza was dead within 32 seconds of her release. (No, I didn't actually time it, but it was pretty fast.) We parted ways without much fanfare, all loot sharded and in our bags.

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The long-awaited Dungeon Finder is finally out on the servers, and people have had a few days with it now, so let's jump in and gauge some early reactions. Overall, it seems to be a big hit -- tanks and healers are jumping into groups right away, and while we've heard of longer waits for DPS, it doesn't seem bad at all. While of course the initial flood of people brought instance servers down (I'd expect to see the same thing happen during peak time this weekend), everything seems to be working well since then: disenchanters are correctly dropping items out, loot is getting distributed correctly, and groups are doing what they were always supposed to do: rake in the badges and rewards for players.

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The Ashen Verdict Reputation Rings
The Ashen Verdict page has been updated with all the reputation rings. A few players farmed trash mobs and are already exalted!

SpecFriendly (251)Honored (259)Revered (268)Exalted (277)

Tank	Ashen Band of Courage	Greater Courage	Unmatched Courage	Endless Courage
Phys.DPS	Ashen Band of Vengeance	Greater Vengeance	Unmatched Vengeance	Endless Vengeance
Spell DPS	Ashen Band of Destruction	Greater Destruction	Unmatched Destruction	Endless Destruction
Healing	Ashen Band of Wisdom	Greater Wisdom	Unmatched Wisdom	Endless Wisdom

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