With so many sites and stores promoting commercialism and spending, it's always refreshing to see fansites run contests that are in the true spirit of the season -- altruism (and ad traffic, of course). In this case, WoW-Achievements.com is getting into the Winter Veil spirit with their Twelve Days of Grunty contest!

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

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. Michael Sacco will be your host today.

It's my little brother's birthday today -- fourteen years old, what the heck -- so today's Queue is quick and dirty so I can get the caking and presenting done.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

Totem Talk is the column for shamans. With the new Random Dungeons and Dungeon Finder, healing has never been more in demand, and shamans find themselves faced with the dilemma: do I wait 10 minutes and go as DPS, or get instantly invited by being willing to heal? Matthew Rossi is impatient and terrifyingly willing to heal random strangers.

Ah, the Pick Up Group. Long a staple of our gameplay in WoW, patch 3.3 revolutionized the way we do it with the new dungeon finder, giving us incentives to put up with fury warriors who rush the tank, ret paladins who forget to turn Righteous Fury off, and runs consisting of two DK's, a paladin, a warrior and a shaman where people ask the shaman if he's tanking. (Hint, he wasn't.) Other things the shaman will not be doing in a PUG include making a summoning portal, a mage table (it's got mage in the name what is wrong with you), casting combat res on the tank when he dies, summoning Army of the Dead (seriously, I can understand being frustrated that someone cast that and it dragged the trash around, but shamans do not generally summon forth armies of walking corpses), washing your laundry (that's just gross), making a pinhole camera, performing a complicated medley of Andrew Lloyd Webber's greatest showtunes (unless you catch me in a really good mood), or casting Divine Intervention.

[Expand 1 Paragraphs]

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

I'm hiding my eyes behind my hands for this one: Anub'Arak (Azjol-Nerub) versus Tribunal of Ages (Halls of Stone). Storyweavers, get ready to spin your webs ... This is the type of match where a good blow-by-blow account in the comments can go a long way toward swaying the vote.

[Expand 2 Paragraphs]

Following on the heels of J!NX's new winter line of WoW merchandise, Hot Topic has released a new line of Blizzard-themed apparel just in time for the holidays.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Following the pattern held in previous years, Blizzard will again be loaning out some of their top developers for panels at this year's Game Developer's Conference in San Francisco, CA. WoW's former Lead Producer Jeff Kaplan, a.k.a. Tigole, presented the keynote speech at last year's GDC, and this year two top developers will be on tap to give horribly esoteric panels.

Brian Schwab, Blizzard's Senior AI/Gameplay Engineer, will be presenting a lecture on AI architecture ...

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Our buddy Rufus from the WoW LJ brings word of a sneaky change in the recent patch: raid warnings (those warnings that pop up in the middle of your screen, created by typing "/rw" while leading a raid) no longer work in parties. Apparently you have to be in a raid to actually toss off a warning. Of course, that could have happened before this patch, but at any rate, it's in the game now. No more /rw in party chat.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

The Ballad of the Green Beret has been one of my favorite songs since childhood. I've always been enthralled by song's epic poetry and steadfast resolve of its descriptions. When I saw ThreePipeProblem's World of Warcraft video take on the song, I instantly fell in love. While this piece features the same music that we all know, the creator used the backdrop of Azeroth to create a music video for the ballad.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Blizzard released a rather cryptic statement this morning concerning the offensive and defensive mechanics of Wintergrasp. Their entire statement is after the break, but it essentially comes down to the fact that there are some realms where one faction controls Wintergrasp nearly the entire time, and Blizzard has now shed some light on mechanics in place to correct this.

The faction hording of Wintergrasp happens particularly often on unbalanced realms. Because the faction imbalance can be so extreme in some cases, the smaller population faction has virtually no chance at winning back the Wintergrasp fortress and obtaining the heirlooms and PvP items, nor any chance at accessing the VoA bosses. This can cause frustration on the part of players in the smaller faction.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Frallanboy of <Harmony> on Frostwhisper-EU sent in this picture of his new pug, which he worked very hard to obtain. "During this PuGing I have met the biggest variety of people, from healing paladins with Val'anyr, to warlocks with full BoA gear. But the pug was so much worth it!" Unfortunately, Frallanboy seems to have wound up with the hyperactive kind of pug, and there's no achievement out there that rewards you with free dog training lessons or puppy Valium.

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

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.

Could the Chrono-Lord not kite? Xevozz moved through the Two Bosses Thunderdome with ease this week, overcoming Chrono-Lord Epoch with 62% of the spectators' roaring approval. Just how one-sided was this match? "This fight is so one-sided, it should instead be a vote to see if Xevozz makes it past Epoch fast enough to get a drake as well," smirks Stone_Rhino.

[View Remaining 5 Paragraphs]

Gnomeaggedon happened to post something so interesting the other day that I thought merited a bit more discussion. He actually posted it almost as an afterthought (I guess he's moving in RL -- good luck with that), but it's quite an idea just the same: "Make it all BoA," he says. Blizzard has added in some more Bind-on-Account items, and most recently made it possible for BoA items to go across factions. But Gnomeaggedon says it's time to stop messing around: mounts, emblems, tier and arena gear, currencies, vanity pets, reputation items, anything that would be useful across toons should be able to be traded freely between them. Why, he asks, should there be limits on which character you decide to play with?

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

According to a post on IGN Comics, Blizzard's Warcraft and Starcraft series of comic books, published by Wildstorm (which in turn is owned by DC comics, owned by Time Warner) are from now on to be published as stand alone graphic novels. The current World of Warcraft comic will end, according to the article, with a special issue arriving in stores while Starcraft will end on issue 7.

[View Remaining 1 Paragraphs]

Blizzard has released another round of in-game fixes, this time late last night. The changes are not as epic (or controversial) as the increase in the Battered Hilt drop rate, but they're still important to note nonetheless.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

Recent In-Game Fixes - December 2009 - 12/16
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

[Expand 4 Paragraphs]