It's time again for Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that loves nothing more than to gaze down upon the whole of Northrend from one of the floating chunks of stone around Dalaran and realize that at some point, a mage has probably killed every living thing down there. At least the targetable ones, anyway. And the ones you can't target? I'm sure more than one mage has certainly tried.

So I'm officially nominating patch 3.3 for "best patch ever" status. Here's a short list of the highlights of this patch:

• Three highly challenging, fun, lore-filled 5-man instances, full of sweet loot
• A massive new raid, with four gated sections, 12 bosses, and the promise of eventually being able to shove a Fireball up the Lich King's tailpipe
• The incredible, game-changing Dungeon Finder Tool, which is responsible for peace in the Middle East, has brought an end to the recession, and has cured cancer
• A few choice mage buffs, including a PvE viable Frost spec
• Quest Tracking without the need for an addon
• Quel'delar and Shadowmourne
• A swiftly approaching new Arena Season
• Weekly raid quests
• The Kalu'ak Fishing Derby
• Perky the Pug
• A host of little changes for low level characters
• Rocket bare

Not shabby, right? And best of all, Blizzard has managed to deploy the majority of this new content without also deploying a host of bugs, glitches, and instability, or otherwise making the game unplayable for awhile as we've come to expect from patches this large. There were some log-in issues and bugginess on day one, but by day two, everything was running relatively smoothly by day two. I'm being relatively conservative when I say that Blizzard, in my personal opinion, has hit this one out of the park.

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Authenticator owners received a nice surprise in their mailboxes when Patch 3.3 dropped: the corehound pup pet. It's absolutely adorable and a completely unexpected bonus to having a secure account. But it has also caused much kvetching among those who feel they are too careful to ever need the authenticator. Pet envy caused some to sign up for the free application for their phone or buy the physical gadget in order to obtain the two-headed cutie. But they soon discovered that removing the authenticator from their accounts also removed the pet.

Their loss can be your gain, however. One problem that many guilds have is that some of their high ranking members, with full bank access, have account security issues. When a guildbank gets raided by a hacker, it affects the entire guild -- not just the compromised account. One thing guild leaders can do to protect all members is require authenticators for bank access. Previous to patch 3.3, this was hard to prove. Now GLs can just ask to see your corehound pup.

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We talked a few weeks ago about the ability bonuses exclusive to each profession. The idea behind this, of course, is that the majority of these bonuses are relatively equal to one another. If you're a master of your profession, you can expect to receive about 80 Attack Power or 47 Spell Power. You could also pick up an additional 60 Stamina if you're an Enchanter or a Miner.

These are the most common bonuses available to all the professions. However, there are a lot more stats in the game than just Spell Power, Attack Power, and Stamina. (Although, it's a fairly reasonable argument that these are three "sexiest" stats in the game, since they tend to be the centerpiece of many e-peen arguments.)

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The dungeon finder tool that rolled out in Patch 3.3 has been a game-changer for most -- if not all! -- of us. Instead of waiting around to find the dungeon group you need, an ample supply of players eager to run the instance you need is only a few clicks away. With this new-found freedom to run any dungeon any time, a lot of the WoW.com team is out running dungeons all the time: gearing up, collecting gold, leveling alts, collecting tier 9, stocking up on emblems... Well, safe to say that no one's quite sure how they lived without it. And looking forward to another weekend of chain-running dungeons, I don't think anyone wants to find out, either.

For more of our exploits -- and yours -- in game this weekend, read on!

• Adam Holisky (@adamholisky): This weekend I'll be online treking amongst the stars.
• Alex Ziebart (@aziebart): Another hour on Algalon, and even more heroics for badges. I'm down to one heroic per 80, just for the Frost Emblems. I needs my Primordial Saronite, you know.
• Allison Robert: Last-minute Christmas shopping, probably some 10-man stuff with the guildies.
• C. Christian Moore (@thearenaguy): alts are 70 right now. Hitting 80 in a day or two from well, let's say "creative leveling," in Icecrown and Zul'drak. And by "creative leveling" of course, I mean going to a spot where respawns are <15 seconds and looping around killing stuff with my 80 for them. About an hour a level isn't bad. They should be 80 by Monday -- just in time to get arena points for the week.
• Chase Christian (@madsushi): Decorating our Christmas tree (years behind, I know) and buying a few last-minute gifts. In game, my guild is shooting for our first Tribute to Insanity run, after a mistake last week forced us to accept a 49 attempt kill.
• Christian Belt (@ihatewarlocks): Continuing to chain-run random heroics with the Dungeon Finder on my holy pally. The groups come super-quick because he's a healer, and I've almost finished scooping up a full set of tier 9 for him. Gearing up alts is so ridiculously easy now... come on Blizzard! What happened to the grind? Where's the timesink? Everybody knows it's not an MMO without a massive timesink!
• Dan O'Halloran: Working the WoW Dungeon Finder tool not only with my 80 moonkin druid, but also with my 32 mage. Also getting back into Skirmishes in LotRO, this time duo'ing with a friend. I think there may be 2-3 holiday parties sprinkled throughout the weekend as well. Hope they're scheduled between Icecrown runs...
• Daniel Whitcomb (@danielwhitcomb): Mostly I will be scrambling to get Christmas shopping and other associated chores done, but if I can fit it in, I'd like to finish farming badges for my tanking offspec set for my death knight and start focusing on gearing up my druid for healing.
• Gregg Reece (@slicertool): Going to see Avatar, dinner with the in-laws, and trying to figure out what to roll up for my Eberron character for an upcoming D&D campaign. Oh, and since I've already got my proto-drake, I'm ignoring the Winter's Veil activities just because I can. Plus I think I'm scheduled for something involving a large citadel in the vicinity of Icecrown.
• Kelly Aarons (@Cadistra): Heading out of town tonight to see my Dad and stepmum for Channukah/Christmas/whatever. Free food! :D Also - Byron, and hopefully sum Grizzly Hillz.
• Lisa Poisso (@emused): Avatar. Holiday baking. Leveling a newbie. Wine. Gift wrapping. Celebrating the solstice.
• Matt Low (@matticus): Yes, I managed to get my twitter name back. Couple of early holiday parties to go to. Hopefully I can squeeze in some more dungeon running on my shaman and paladin.
• Matthew Rossi (@MatthewWRossi): Since the shaman's gotten some decent gear, the DK may see some random PUG action. Or maybe I'll just run the warriors some more. God, DPS warriors are still fun to play.
• Michael Gray (@writegray): Dungeon Finder. Hopefully making it up to a group for whom I tanked after a bit of overindulgence.
• Michael Sacco (@mikesacco): Planning, plotting, possibly scheming.
• Robin Torres (@cosmiclaurel): Dungeon Finder with the level 33 priestess. How did I ever level without it?


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Even the dungeons are getting into the spirit of the holiday season -- as proven by this screenshot from Nexmors of <The Elites> on Nagrand (EU). So... what? How? Why? Well, I think I'll just let Nexmors explain:

"When encountering Svala Sorrowgrave she bugged after the speech which meant no fighting could commence so we decided to take advantage of this by taking a festive screenshot."

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In my monomaniac drive to improve my shaman's gear and more importantly play with some spec ideas for enhancement (I've currently started testing this one with Glyph of Fire Nova, which gets Fire Nova down from 10 seconds to 3, meaning that on heavy trash pulls I can weave a Fire Nova blast in-between pretty much every other ability I have), I've been hitting the random dungeon feature like it owes me money. As a result, I've had some good runs, some bad runs, and some unintentionally hilarious runs, like the all draenei run in Caverns of Time Stratholme which degenerated into "Don't mind us, we're totally human and do not have any hooves or tentacles at all" comments for pretty much the entire run. "Eredar? What's that? Never heard of it. Totally normal humans from this appropriate time period, that's us."

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This is most likely the first batch of blue posts before the christmas holidays, it doesn't mean that the site will get boring for the next 2 weeks and I should have a few things to keep you busy during that time. (It will probably become more interesting actually ...)

Recent In-Game Fixes - December 2009 - 12/17
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.

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