'Twas the night before Winter Veil and all through the house
Not a creature was stirring, sans a click of the mouse

The presents were stored by the tree with great care,
In hopes that Grand' Winter would soon be there;

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

Here we are at the end of our current bracket ... And what a fight this last one will be! Bring your earplugs, because we suspect this fight's going to be on the loud side: Skadi the Ruthless versus Svala Sorrowgrave. The two Utgarde Pinnacle residents step into the Two Bosses Thunderdome with nearly identical seeding. Skadi took out the venerable General Bjarngrim with 56% spectator approval, while Svala sacrificed Salramm the Fleshcrafter with 57% of the vote.

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2009 has been a year of almost continuous changes for shamans. It seems that not a patch has gone by without some changes to the class, some major, some not so severe. The class has seen mysterious DPS shortfalls, a minor controversy about health in PvP that then carried over into PvE content with the high levels of AoE damage in Ulduar with patch 3.1. Flametongue Weapon saw changes to prevent enhancement shamans from using caster weapons. Resto got a fairly substantial review and some significant tweaks. Elemental also saw some talents redesigned.

While all of this was going on, shamans also saw some controversy about itemization, gear scaling and having to share caster mail between two specs that value different stats, as well as the constant battle with holy paladins to keep their grubby, grasping mitts off of our mail. Yeah, we know you don't want that MP5 plate, but since you're the only ones who can possibly get anything out of it, go away and leave our precious alone. (Cue the pages of discussion on why it's perfectly acceptable for holy paladins to take caster mail and explanations in detail of why I'm an inhuman monster who drowns fish. Yes, fish, That's how evil I am.)

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May saw a huge influx of players to Ulduar, the end of the revamped Noblegarden holiday, Children's Week, a paladin blogger named Ferarro, BlizzCon ticket queues (which, while packed to the scuppers, were nowhere near the nightmare they'd been in 2008), and the start of news concerning patch 3.2 and new druid forms (!).

Disappointment with the patch 3.1 game world: A lot of our staffers pointed to Alex's article as a good pinpoint on why patch 3.1 didn't feel like it was really moving the expansion forward.

Children's Week ruins battlegrounds: I hated School of Hard Knocks because I thought it was a poorly-designed achievement spurring irresponsible play. Zach hated it because it's also guaranteed to wreck battlegrounds for the length of the holiday.

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You might remember this song from when we first covered it last year. But it was a great touch of Christmas music for WoW players back then, and it still holds its charm this year. Okay, All I want for Christmas is a Blue is a tad dated, since most people are now struggling to rock out their Northrend epics. Blue-quality gear is fairly well a thing of the past right now. But the sentiment is still perfectly appropriate.

All I want for Christmas is a Blue has that nifty real-life versus machinima feel when the singer is /inspecting other people in the real world, and I'll be recreating that in my mind while standing in Christmas Eve lines today. The song's lyrics will probably be a little tough to remember, but I'm sure I'll be humming it anyway.

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Even during Winter Veil, Azeroth is still a war zone, as warlock Hated of Mok'Nathal found out when attempting to deliver presents to the children of Draenor. A well-aimed Burning Legion fireball over Blade's Edge took out his sleigh and most of his reindeer. Rudolph should have turned off his glowing nose -- it only attracts the surface-to-air heat-seeking spells.

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From time to time it occurs to me that my character, were I a better roleplayer, has actually been to a whole lot of places. He's seen a ridiculous amount of things and would have a really hard time settling down on a farm somewhere on Azeroth or whatever it is old adventurers do when they're tired of killing old gods, elemental monstrosities, Dragon Aspects, ancient liches, and Illidan Stormrage, to name just a few.

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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!

It's no surprise, really, that Anub'arak took control of this week's Two Bosses deathmatch with a 73% pounding of the Tribunal of Ages. We're not sure that voters really considered any realistic scenario when casting their votes, but we did get a few interesting setups from spectators. The quality of the floor, in particular, seemed to be a sticking point for many.

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Tuesday, we kicked off our Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Every day until January 2, 2010 will have new prizes to give away along with new loot codes. Today, we are giving away 1 Disco Inferno code courtesy of WoWTCGLoot.com. As you can see in the movie above, this in-game item summons a disco ball that comes with a lightshow and disco music. Any player that clicks on it will /dance. The perfect celebration item for your next guild meeting or surviving a PUG with your sanity intact.

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WoW.com continues celebrating Winter Veil with our Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests. Today is day ten of our countdown and we are giving away a set of World of Warcraft novels written by Christie Golden to one lucky winner courtesy of Pocket Books. The set includes:

• Arthas
• Beyond The Dark Portal
• Rise of the Horde
• Warcraft Archive


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Neverdied - LVL 80 Mage - No Quest, No Dungeons, No Death
It's Christmas eve and I have a wonderful story for you! Neverdied, a mage from Chimera (US - Durotan) reached level 80 yesterday!

• Character Armory Profile
• Character Statistics

Of course it's not just another level 80, the character was leveled without any quests, instances, or even deaths! Here is the mail I received:

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