15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com's look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes -- from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, from the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

If the tank in your last pickup group seemed more than a little evil to you, perhaps you're closer to home than you realize. Perhaps that death knight was actually World Extreme Cagefighting featherweight and dedicated WoW fan Jens "Little Evil" Pulver. The former UFC lightweight champion blows off steam after a hard day of training with a well developed roster of WoW characters, some well known to his fans and others known only to close friends and guildmates.

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For a few days now, I've been mulling over a point raised by Spinksville in a blog post concerning the Dungeon Finder's impact on smaller servers. It was her contention that, although the Dungeon Finder makes getting 5-man runs faster and easier for people on underpopulated realms, the new tool was contributing (or likely to contribute) to the depopulation of realms without a lot of options for raiding. It's never been easier to gear up a character, she observed, and someone with a geared character is increasingly likely to want that toon raiding. However, smaller servers rarely field the array and depth of PuG raiding opportunities offered by larger realms. Her conclusion? "Being on a smaller server has never been less attractive for a casual player."

While I go back and forth on that point -- lots of people will just gear a toon for its own sake without necessarily planning to raid on it -- I don't think she's entirely wrong, and I also think the larger point concerning the Dungeon Finder's potential impact on server communities is probably accurate.

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Despite the fairly slow news week, we had a good WoW Insider Show podcast this Saturday, with Project Lore writers Tim "Heartbourne" Tusing and Jimmy "DJTyrant" Blocksom stopping by to offer their unique perspective on reader emails, the week's top stories, and having too little to talk about, for once. We discussed Sam Raimi's newfound freedom to work on the Warcraft movie, the Blizzard dev chat on Twitter, why tauren paladins really aren't that broken, and a myriad of other topics.

As always, you can email theshow@wow.com to have your email answered on the air, and if you have any guests you'd like to see on the show (or you'd like to be a guest yourself!) you can get a hold of us the same way.

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We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• This week's EU forum watch brings you the best of the official forums, European style.
• OutDPS has a cure for the lagging hunter pet, increasing their DPS by a bit.
• Shields Up really likes the two piece tier 10 bonus on the resto shaman set.
• Killing 'em slowly looks at his elemental shaman twink gear.
• The German WoW fansite buffed.de is collecting photos of the players and their avatars for a large gallery. Go check it out and contribute if you want!
• Cynwise's Battelgrounds takes a look at heirloom gear for the lowbie battleground player.


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Melee combat? Barbaric. Healing? How pedestrian. Let the elements do the talking. Totem Talk: Elemental. Brought to you by Mike Sacco.

If you're here and reading this, you've probably decided that elemental will be one of your shaman's two possible specs and you want to get a good grasp of how it all works before you dive in. The maiden voyage of Totem Talk's Elemental edition is intended to tell you everything you need to know to get started as one of the game's simplest specs, from mechanics to gearing to rotation.

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Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we look at Grid and realize that the dumb buggers are dropping like flies again.

Before I write anything else, I want to send a shout-out to Kalon, who is ending the influential feral theorycraft blog ThinkTank. Like many of you, I've been reading ThinkTank for a while and fell in love with both Kalon's analysis and the theorycrafting that he made understandable even to Luddites like myself. To this day I've been experimenting with an idea he suggested concerning Bear DPS (no, really) that I've been planning to devote a column towards for a while, and I now regret not doing it earlier.

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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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

Why yes, that is the most disgusting whale you've ever seen. Unless, of course, you've witnessed local authorities taking dynamite to a beached whale to get it out of the way since they couldn't move it just by pushing the thing. That is disgusting. Whale guts landing on cars a mile away? No thanks. I'll take the guy pictured above over that.

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Crimson Halls, another wing within Icecrown Citadel has been unlocked this week. The Icecrown Citadel raid overview here on WoW.com has been updated accordingly. Summaries of the Blood Princes Council and Queen Lana'thel are available along with links and resources. Just starting out in Icecrown CItadel? Don't worry as information about the bosses in both the Lower Spire and the Plagueworks are still available

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Welcome to another edition of the WoW.com Weekly Comic -- Byron the Tauren Rogue!

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This is War is the first machinima effort by Rogue Frog Productions. You can see an amalgam of techniques in the video, which certainly shows that Rogue Frog is taking huge steps with his style. I hope he continues to grow as he explores machinima creation, since there's a lot of good hints toward viable talent in this video.

30 Seconds to Mars is a good band to sing about Northrend since their moody, somber feel highlights the questionable morality of everyone involved in the northern wars. The video seems to be very open to interpretation. It avoids giving a clear, inalienable message and instead sticks to presenting the audience with a series of genre flashes and montages throughout Northrend.

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Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all those other shiny MMOs! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	Captain's Log: Community guide to Star Trek Online We aim to inform and entertain here at Massively, and the same can be said of our Star Trek Online coverage. This is the first in a new ongoing feature entitled -- as you can plainly see -- Captain's Log. However, as a regular column you can expect guides, tips, op-eds and community spotlights. I've opted to kick this one off with a community guide to the game, as it's arguably one of the most useful things for anyone interested in learning more about the people playing a game.
	Exclusive Allods Online dev tour: Astral Ships and the end game explained Earlier this week, the team at Allods Online were kind enough to sit down and walk me through some of the highest-level areas in the game. Knowing that I'm already an avid fan of the game, it was exciting for us both to "talk shop" for a bit. It was especially exciting to see some features of the end game that not too many North American players have seen up to this point. Of course, I'm talking about Astral Ships and the end game.
	Bioware confirms 2011 SWTOR release Yesterday we talked about a rumor that had been floating around thanks to Electronic Arts CEO John Riccitiello, who had mentioned the spring 2011 launch of an unnamed MMO on a recent conference call. Of course, the Star Wars: The Old Republic rumor mill sprang into action, with good cause as it turns out.
	Seven tips for Star Trek Online newbies There's certainly a lot of lesser known MMO concepts to learn in Star Trek Online, and there's also some familiar aspects as well. With open beta ongoing and launch looming, this guide is here to help brand new players ease into the swing of things. We'll cover the odd class system, progression and several other tips and suggestions for those of you just beginning your venture into a galaxy full of Gorn raiders, Orion slavers and uh, Tribbles.

	HanbitSoft acquires worldwide publishing rights for Hellgate: London It's been a long and turbulent ride for Hellgate: London, stretching all the way back to its rather troubled Halloween 2007 launch under the banner of the ill-fated Flagship Studios. This stretched through a bewildering morass of licensing disputes, general misinformation, and mixed signals (like continual English press releases for the game in a non English-speaking market. *ahem*)
	Dungeons and Dragons Online releases notes for update 3 Turbine is planning the next update for Dungeons and Dragons Online, and while it's not set to launch for a few more weeks, the current release notes are up for players to take a look at now. The next update will bring about some very welcome changes, such as the removal of level sigils, new free content in the form of four new dungeons, and the addition of casual difficulty mode for solo players and small groups.
	MMO Family: A parent's look at Free Realms This week, MMO Family begins a gaming-savvy look at some of the most popular kid MMOs. You know what you like in an MMO – but what about your kids? And what if you're looking for something the whole family could play together?
	Star Trek Online lifetime subs now available Cryptic has revealed the lifetime subscription offer for Star Trek Online, which comes with playable Borg (not as a faction, but as liberated Borg) and is only available to those who've pre-ordered the game. Oddly enough, the price of the LS is $40 higher than Champions Online's was when it was announced August of last year.
	Why You Should Be Playing PlanetSide: It's online war! War seems to be a hot topic in MMOs today. From MAG to Global Agenda, online war is the place to be. But a few years ago, having an online war with 300 people at once was unheard of until one game pushed the boundaries and made it so -- PlanetSide. Sony Online Entertainment started the concept of having the MMO and the FPS merge together into one being that was above and beyond a persistent online shooter.
	LEGO Universe gameplay footage full of 'imagination' It's been a long time coming, but we've finally got a good look at early alpha footage of LEGO Universe thanks to CES10. Gametrailers has a four part video of a developer walkthrough given by NetDevil's Scott Brown, and boy is it ever full of multicolored brick-y goodness.
	First Impressions: MAG It's a technical marvel, really, to be able to shoot at 256 people at once. Very few games have been able to get this many players into one enclosed space, and even fewer have been able to do it without having everything lock down in lag. But Zipper Interactive's MAG is taking the bull by the horns and is following in the footsteps of games like PlanetSide to deliver a true "war" experience to the PS3.
	Global Agenda launch trailer released "They always warned us that if we weren't careful, our technology would outrun our humanity. Way I see it, it's finally getting interesting." So begins the latest Global Agenda offering from Hi-Rez Studios: the launch trailer. With the launch of Global Agenda just a few short weeks away, fans and developers alike are enjoying the excitement that comes as a game's release date approaches.

Sometimes we get submissions to Around Azeroth that are not screenshots, but are nevertheless difficult to pass up. I could not in good conscience let this effort by Longrangedps of Ner'zhul go unrewarded. He writes that he took this picture at Blizzcon, adding, "Totally worth a full day of walking around with a newspaper, an extra pair of shorts, and toilet paper."

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Ok, I'm going to come right out and admit it: I'm thinking of cheating on WoW. No, I don't mean like Mass Effect or Dragon Age, I mean seriously playing another MMO and sticking with it. I'm talking in specific, of Lego Universe, the upcoming title from NetDevil. I've been a Lego Maniac from a pretty young age. One of the best days of my childhood was the day my parents bought a massive bin of Legos from a garage sale. I created my own massive Lego castle village. My birthday and Christmas wish lists invariably consisted of Lego sets. Even to this day I sometimes think I should have pursued a master builder career. So the chance to do this all again in an MMORPG? You know I'll leap at it.

Of course, other MMOs are usually the purvey of our sister blog, Massively, but in this case, something caught our eye in a recent report on the making of Lego Universe by the Denver Westword News: The article claims that the number of 3-dimensional surfaces on a single 16-stud Lego Universe brick is twice as many as found on your average World of Warcraft character.

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Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. As of this writing, the big news of the week is probably the latest Twitter developer chat. If you missed it, we have the transcript. Topics included the fate of Crystalsong Forest, pet scaling buffs, new warlock pets, personal guild banks and other storage issues, and more. Be sure to check it out, it's good reading whether you're focused on Patch 3.3 or on Cataclysm. Coming up, we have the opening of the Crimson Halls, the next wing of Icecrown Citadel. That means lots of vampires. They're blood elf vampires, sure, but blood elves are awesome, so it's all good. And hey, if you dislike blood elves, at least take comfort in the fact that these vampires don't sparkle.

Finally, it looks like advance notice for downtime may be the name of the game after all, as we've know about today's downtime for a few days now. It's 3 AM to 11 AM pacific time, if you haven't heard, which means you should have plenty of time to catch up on WoW news. Check out a list of some of our content from the last 7 days below the cut.

Hot News and Features

• The official armory got some pretty sweet upgrades recently, including a 3D character viewer.
• Speaking of which, be sure to protect yourself with knowledge of the latest armory phishing scams.
• Check out some of the latest in-game fixes as of January 12th.
• The rumors are getting hotter: Has Sam Raimi really moved on to the Warcraft movie?
• In more WoW criminal news, we have someone arrested for an account selling scam.
• You can now fly straight to the Frozen Throne in Icecrown. Sort of.


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