My guild is made up of long-time gamers, including folks who've been roleplaying for dang near two decades. And even though we like to style ourselves "hardcore raiders," we all have to admit that we have those characterization inclinations from time to time. We like our immersion. We like our stories. So when we came across Lady Deathwhisper, we had to make a story up for ourselves.

As the story goes, we met and defeated Kel'Thuzad back in Naxxramas. But, Arthas wasn't quite finished with his trusted lieutenant yet, and raised him (again) from the dead. But something went horribly, horribly wrong. Lord Kel'Thuzad returned from the grave as Lady Deathwhisper! Naxxramas was only a setback, but it was one heck of a setback!

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors this week goes back to Icecrown Citadel to discuss the last two currently accessible encounters, the Gunship Battle and Deathbringer. Matt Rossi kind of wishes the Deathbringer fight was just against a great big talking axe. We don't have enough boss fights with inanimate objects.

Okay, so you've done the first two bosses in the place. Now what? Well, now you launch yourself via poorly designed goblin explosives between flying boats and you fight the son of possibly the greatest living warrior on the face of Azeroth. And then if you're Alliance you turn the whole thing over to a gnome with a frying pan and go raid Trial of the Grand Crusader for another week, I guess. Horde are presumably too clever to trust the opening of Icecrown to breakfast technology. Or too hungry. At any rate you're stuck with the same content as the rest of us.

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For the final give away of WoW.com's 12 Days of Winter Veil contests we thought we'd end big. How big? With a pack of four Steelseries gaming accessories worth $275. It includes one of each:

• World of Warcraft MMO Gaming Mouse
• World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lich King Mousepad
• World of Warcraft Wrath of the Lick King Z-board
• Steelseries Siberia v2 Full Size Headset


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Cinch up your robes and brandish your wands, it's time for another edition of Arcane Brilliance, the weekly mage column that sincerely hopes that this picture was taken by a warlock, just before the mage on the other end got an honorable kill.

Around Thanksgiving, Arcane Brilliance received an email from a reader named Todd. I liked it so much that I wrote him back and told him I'd devote a column to his topic at some point soon. Though it has been over a month, I'm finally getting around to writing that column. In my defense, though: I'm extremely lazy. In the interests of space, I won't print the entire email, which was long, polite, and quite well-written. But here are some selections:

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We're on the last day of WoW.com's 12 Days of Winter Veil contests and to keep the swag rolling, we're giving away a gift certificate that will give you $100 credit for merchandise ordered at Swagdog. We have 2 of those codes to give away and you can enter for a chance to win one of them.

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WoW.com's final day of Twelve Days of Winter Veil contests keeps on rolling. For the last loot code contest, we're giving away 1 Foam Sword Rack code courtesy of WoWTCGLoot.com. A rack of foam swords can be summoned. From there, any player can click on the rack to temporarily gain a foam sword that can be used to duel other players or just bonk them on the head. If a player loses a duel, their foam sword will explode into confetti.

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I'm looking for people who watched the Blizzcon on DirectTV (NOT the stream) and have a recorded copy somewhere to check a few things, please contact me if you want to help!

Blizzard will be back to work on Monday and announcements/regular blue posts will be back as well!

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The WoW Insider Show returns to the airwaves today at 3:30 PM Eastern time, bringing you post-new-years-eve fun. Michael Sacco and Matthew "Burly Ives" Rossi will be your co-hosts with Colby Moore jumping in to stop these two shamans from talking about just how great elemental really is. This week they'll be covering the major stories in the later half of 2009 and talk about the earthquakes happening in game.

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Today is the last day of WoW.com's 12 Days of Winter Veil contests and we're finishing big with four, count them four, giveaways. First, we're giving away two BlizzCon 2009 goodie bags, including all original contents. Winners will recieve, among other things, a code for Grunty The Murloc Marine in-game pet, the Noobz Raynor action figure and an official BlizCon 2009 authenticator. You can view the full contents of the goody bag in the gallery below.

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How many old-school Horde players used to use the "forest of totems" strategy on the trash packs in Blackwing Lair? Draenei shaman Vhaelor of <Deux Ex Machina> on Destromath missed out on this experience, being Alliance and all, so he decided to recreate it in the Stormwind castle. Unfortunately, Vhaelor himself couldn't see his mighty forest, so it was up to his friends to inform him of this bug. His pal Whitepaws snapped this photo and sent it in to us. Thanks, guys!

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If you're at all like me, and since you're reading this site you probably are, there comes a point where you play so much WoW that you end up playing too much WoW. It's that point where you've farmed 70 badges in a day and just stop all the sudden and think to yourself, "What the heck did I just do with the year the day?"

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