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 Angry Dwarfs covers patch 3.3 for new players.
• BobTurkey continues his patch 3.3 theorycrafting guide for priests, discussing haste rating this time around.
• Protection paladins, Righteous Defense has a guide for you. A list of desirable loot from the first wing of Icecrown Citadel, as well as Emblems of Frost.
• And then we have a guide from SpicyTuna, discussing a PvE frost mage's strategy for Lord Marrowgar.
• Rogues, not sure what the traps in Icecrown Citadel look like? Forever a Noob can, strangely enough, make you less of a noob.


[View Remaining 1 Lists]

Every week (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a UI and addons blog for WoW. Too bad he was too busy running heroics to come to the aid of the King!

[Expand 7 Paragraphs]

We'd rolled Naxxramas, trounced Malygos, beaten Sartharion and his little drakes to death -- and that was all there was to do in Tier 7. With a roughly three-month wait between Wrath going live and the first whisper of patch 3.1 hitting the PTR, a number of players found themselves out of raiding content within the space of two days a week and already exalted with the game's four new factions (the sole unfortunate byproduct of Blizzard making rep grinds less hellish). To top it all off, many instance servers were still plagued by chronic lag and instability, and that's assuming you could get on them at all with the masses of people trying to run heroics and raids.

[Expand 3 Paragraphs]

It's probably simply a reflection of my own, long habits in terms of MMORPGs, but I tend to put a lot of thought in where to roleplay. I mean, a lot. When I first started seriously roleplaying in Dark Age of Camelot, one of my favorite areas was out by the docks. The sound and sight of water lapping against the shore appealed to some mawkish, maudlin post-teenage angst in me.

Then, in City of Heroes, I was introduced to a different way of roleplaying in video games. The heroes (and story-based villains) gathered in a small stretch of park next to a danger zone. Hunkered against a lake in Galaxy City, dozens of players would come together to roleplay with whoever happened to be around. That reminded me of my MUD days, of course, and it seemed the best option to get everyone involved. As I cruised different "servers," the roleplayers always seemed to gather in that same, exact area. The reasons were obvious -- it was a safe place for newb toons, and it lent itself naturally to the kind of casual roleplay most folks prefer.

[Expand 7 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. Adam Holisky be your host today.

In the spirit of the holidays, I'm going to throw a little Duke Ellington at ya' as today's listening music. In my prolonged stint as a music major in college (saxophone FTW), I always wanted to play his Nutcracker Suite, but never got the chance. But nonetheless, it's one of my favorite pieces of music -- holiday or otherwise.

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]

Want to crush your enemies, see them driven before you, and hear the lamentation of their women? Blood Sport investigates the entirety of all-things arena for gladiators and challengers alike. C. Christian Moore, multiple rank 1 gladiator, examines the latest arena strategy, trends, compositions and more in WoW.com's arena column.

Listening Music: Modeselektor's Tetrispack. Allison Robert offered a challenge to our most beloved columnist last week. Ms. Roberts has chosen a clever and palatable piece with Richard Shindell's On-A-Sea-Of-Fleur-De-Lis. And now we come to my retaliation. My wife recommended our musical selection today -- it just happened to be on the absolute opposite end of the spectrum. How fitting. We love this song, albeit mostly for the intro. Upon your first listen, if you correctly predict the timing and type of shift in the first thirty seconds, serious e-props to you.

[Expand 2 Paragraphs]

Blood Pact is your weekly warlock digest brought to you by Dominic Hobbs. "You have found your way here, because you are among the few gifted with true vision in a world cursed with blindness! You can see through the fog that hangs over this world like a shroud and grasp where true power lies!" ~ Lady Deathwhisper

This week we delve into Icecrown Citadel and see what these new bosses are all about. We face a bag of bones that won't sit still, a somewhat effeminate version of Kel'Thuzad, a lift boss that is actually supposed to kill you and an orc-gone-bad. All in a day's work for your warlock on the go.

[Expand 6 Paragraphs]

The Ancient Gaming Noob picked up this awesome trailer for Icecrown Citadel, created originally by Kesudor. The title of this piece is Wrath of the Lich King, Casino Royale Style. If you're a fan of the James Bond movies, there's no way you can miss the obvious homage to those distinctive, elegant opening credits.

Two things in particular stood out to me as clever takes on the style. First, the heavy use of Frostmourne as an iconic image mirrors the use of a gun in the James Bond trailers. Displaying a weapon in this kind of trailer gives the audience a sense of menace, and helps cement what genre the movie lives in.

[View Remaining 4 Paragraphs]

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Some guild leaders think we are irreplaceable, but few of us actually are. Who will carry on the Torch of the Damned if we can't fulfill our duties? I know exactly who would if I ever had to stop playing. But some guild leaders aren't that lucky. Caasi is one of them. She wrote me this week to ask what she should do.

[Expand 7 Paragraphs]

A present? How lovely! Let me just open it and ... oh, hey. It's a very small gnome. In very revealing clothing. Okay, I appreciate the thought, but you obviously know nothing about my taste in gifts. Is Chris Hansen going to show up and ask me to take a seat? I hope you at least kept the receipt so I can exchange it for something in my size. (Thanks to Nura of Terenas-EU for the pic.)

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

Here's a question that occurred to me while I was walking home from the subway recently: What's the average winning roll in a five-man group, assuming everyone rolls? That is, if you randomly chose five numbers between one and 100, what is the expected value of the highest one?

I know a bit of statistics, but I really don't know how to begin getting at that one. However, I do know how to write a script that will calculate the answer. (Yes, these numbers are only pseudorandom, but I did some limited testing with real random numbers (from random.org) and the results were the same. Besides, I'm pretty sure Ruby's Mersenne twister pseudorandom generator is good enough for testing distributions like this.) The average winning roll out of a group of five people is 82.8 83.8 (tested over many, many repetitions). Now can any mathemagicians tell me why?

The graph above, in case it isn't clear, is average winning roll on the y-axis vs number of people rolling on the x-axis, tested over 100,000 trials for each group (the relatively small sample size is why the first point is not right at 50, and probably why the curve is a little wobbly).

[View Remaining 2 Paragraphs]

The random dungeon finder is not only great for gearing up alts and getting mains the necessary badges to fill out their gear -- it's an amazing tool which forces an increase in the WoW community's collective knowledge about instances and game mechanics. And while some of these game mechanics will be a discussion for a future time (hint: tomorrow's Breakfast Topic), today let's focus on what instances you've had to "relearn," more or less.

Take Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom. Prior to the random heroic dungeons, I probably ran this place a grand total of five times. My warrior tank got the bracers on his fist run through it, and I did it on a few more alts just to get the Northrend Dungeon Hero achievement. Other than that, when it was the heroic daily I'd just skip it and find something else to do. Nothing annoyed me more than the Insanity that Hearld Volazj casts, and the trash pulls got on my nerves when the DPS couldn't wait for the mobs to come to the tank, inevitably leading to a wipe.

[View Remaining 3 Paragraphs]

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

So when was the last time your holiday stocking was covered with Shadowfiends, tree form and daggers? Yeah, we thought so. Neither are ours. Follow the example, then, set by these customized wonders from Arensson of Thorium Brotherhood and her friend Syrellis. "The look on our hubbies' faces was absolutely priceless when we surprised them," Arensson reports. "Definitely worth the effort. I have to note that we tried our very best to get a Berserking enchantment on the dagger for the rogue and a +81 Spellpower enchantment on the staff for mine. We had a blast making these stockings and are thinking about doing ones for our alts next year!"

[Expand 5 Paragraphs]