A guildie got the above whisper Tuesday night. (I have blocked out the website so as not to promote this phishing attempt.) We have reports of this happening to a lot of people in-game right now as yet another attempt to get you to go to a site, so they can steal your login info and defile your characters.

Let's dissect the above whisper:

• It's one whisper made to look like two. This will work if your chat settings match the scammer's chat settings, but if you've fiddled with your font or chat window, then the formatting will be off and the scam will be more obvious.
• The whisper is from a garbage name. All "players" I've seen with random characters have been scammers or gold selling barkers. So anything after such a name should be considered highly suspect.
• It says [Game Master]GM. The scammers aren't even trying here. Blizzard GMs have names and have <GM> before their names.
• It sends you to a non-Blizzard site. Don't go to any website you get in tells or in-game mail as a general rule. If you have received a ban of any kind, you will receive an email to the account you have on file with your subscription info.

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It's time to put an end to the whole Ensidia thing and go back to WoW news! If you still want to discuss the subject I suggest that you head to Ensidia's website. A lot of people asked me what was my opinion on the subject, I'll keep it simple : I got information from both Ensidia and Blizzard (unofficially, just to be clear) sides and I still have no idea who is wrong or right, and we will probably never know.

This is just a lot of time wasted discussing kills when guilds aren't even competing for the Heroic Mode yet, just be glad the bug was found now and see you next week for heroic modes!

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Zach continues Monday's The Art of War(craft), which started an overview of the game's premier pet class by checking out their pets. Today, we'll take a closer look at the hunters themselves...

A hunter's basic repertoire of attacks consists of shots and stings, the former doing a variety of damaging effects and the latter applying a debuff. Although you only have to worry about one kind of sting being applied to you at any time, hunters have a sting for every kind of opponent. Serpent Sting is the most common, damaging sting, although they can also opt to use Viper Sting on mana-users or even Scorpid Sting against melee classes or other hunters. Stings are nature-based poison debuffs that can be removed by spells such as Cleansing Totems, Cleanse, and Cure Poison.

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After the recent changes to resilience and the reduction of healing in PvP, we now move on to spells that prevent damage entirely. Power Word: Shield and Sacred Shield are also being affected, having their effectiveness in Arenas, Wintergrasp and Battlegrounds reduced by 10%. Bornakk broke the news to the forums, which responded about as you might expect, with people who rely on those mechanics frustrated and those who have to try and kill people using them jubilant. I know, I was shocked too.

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GuildOx reports that Paragon, from the European Lightning's Blade realm, has defeated the Lich King and acquired the Frozen Throne achievement. While well-known guild Ensidia had defeated him yesterday on 25-man difficulty, they also employed some dubious techniques to win and later paid the price for it by having their loot and achievements removed.

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Love him or hate him, it looks like Jay Mohr is hosting BlizzCon again this year. Recently, we reported that the Anaheim Convention Center would be hosting BlizzCon toward the end of October. But there has been nothing official from Blizzard at this time.

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AddOn Spotlight focuses on the backbone of the WoW gameplay experience - the user interface. Everything from bags to bars, buttons to DPS meters and beyond - your AddOns folder will never be the same! This week, we do some mad-deeps.

Before I start my first Addon Spotlight, I wanted to quickly give a primer on my Addon/UI preferences and the way I hope to spotlight and review addons here at WoW.com. World of Warcraft is over five years old now, and in such a short period of time a ragtag bunch of Addon coders and modders fashioned thousands of addons, making the game playable. Over five years the addon environment has evolved so greatly that now, in addition to discussing form and function, we can judge addons from an aesthetic approach. Addons that allow for greater customization and tailored appearances are now the norm. I strive to help players find not only the most useful and functional addons but also the most aesthetically pleasing of the bunch. I hope everyone reading will appreciate the mix of form, function and aesthetics, creating a better UI for everyone.

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Have a dual spec: In current raids, there's a degree of variability on the number of healers used in a fight. Want to be valuable? Pick up a DPS and healing spec. Offer to do both depending on what the raid needs. A fight like Valithria could benefit with 7 healers for raids that are just starting out. On the other hand, Festergut needs a reduction in healers in order to match the DPS requirements. You can get away with about 5 on that encounter. Your second spec doesn't have to be one of a different role either. I myself run holy as one spec and discipline as the other. It's handy in case I need to mass cast Power Word: Shield against Saurfang and then switch it up later to holy for Valithria.

Stay up to date on all the fights: Do your homework. Understand what is super relevant for healers. On a fight like Blood Princes, you know that the fight mechanic involves keeping the kinetic bombs in the air. If there is one directly on top of you and you notice there aren't any DPS around, hit it with a quick spell to keep it suspended until someone can head over and help you out with it. Watch some kill videos and read up on the experiences of others to gain some idea of what your raid is about to go through. Who knows? Maybe you'll see remember something your leaders forgot that happens to be crucial to the fight.

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Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime. Of course, you people with lots of playtime can read this too, but you may get annoyed by the fact that we are unashamed, even proud, of the fact that beating WoW isn't our highest priority. Take solace in the fact that your gear is better than ours, but if that doesn't work, remember that we outnumber you. Not that that's a threat, after all, we don't have time to do anything about it. But if WoW were a democracy, we'd win.

This week, dear Reader with Limited WoW Playtime, I am going to let you in on my thought process. This is partially to create a kind of casual WoW.com reading list, partially to tackle topics too small to fill up a whole column and partially to show that normality is not my strong suit. But who wants to be normal? Normal is boring.

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New around here? WoW Rookie points WoW's newest players to the basics of a good start in the World of Warcraft. For links to all our tips, tricks and how-to's, visit WoW.com's WoW Rookie Guide.

No longer do new players find their noses wistfully plastered against the front windows of instances in Azeroth and Burning Crusade, sniffing at the tempting scents within like ragamuffins on the doorstep of a bakery on an icy morning. Thanks to the Dungeon Finder, it's once again possible to have your fill of instances along the road to level 80. The Dungeon Finder makes things easy -- except, unfortunately, in situations when it makes them even harder.

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This movie was created by RavenSylphG, who you might recall was the machinima creator of the incredibly popular Ninja Raiders. Raven has put together a new video for the song On the Horde. It's pretty nice to be able to feature more of her work, since I'm really finding myself enamored of her graphic style.

On the Horde is performed by Kirstieanne, Cryssy, and Sharm. (You're probably pretty familiar with Sharm from videos like I Kissed An Orc). This is the first time I've been exposed to Kirstieanne and Cryssy. I liked both of their performances, and think they did a good job singing with Sharm. I will admit that On the Horde didn't hit me as the best song ever, but I still respect the amount of work and effort that must have gone into creating it.

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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. Michael Gray is your answer man today.

Howdy there, Queue-travellers. This is my first time answering The Queue, so I've gathered up questions from yesterday, earlier in the week, and even before. I'll be laying the answer-down on them. Wish me a tad bit of luck. Some of this is stuff that I always meant to get a full-time post out on, but never did manage to get a full article out of them.

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Chris Dinwiddie is better known as Graylo from the popular moonkin blog Gray Matter. "I started my blog to talk about all the things in WoW that interest me. It turns out that my interests are fairly narrow, and my blog primarily focuses on moonkin raiding with the occasional aside to celebrate a boss kill or mourn a near miss."

Ahh, Eclipse. The talent the moonkin love to hate, or do we hate to love it? I don't know. It's a complicated relationship, but I would be surprised if there is another talent out there that stirs up as much emotion as Eclipse. On one hand, it is the savior of raiding moonkin everywhere. Without it moonkin would not be raid viable, and would be stuck with what some consider to be a very boring rotation. On the other hand, it can be a source of despair when you look at the WoL parse and face tough questions from a raid leader.

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It looks like Ensidia's 25-man world first on the Lich King will go down with an asterisk next to it, because they've all just received a three-day ban for "Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft." The Ensidia blog post reporting this is down as of this writing due to traffic, but you can still view the Google cache.

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When I was younger, I never understood the whole pre-teen girl obsession with owning horses. Huge, expensive beasts with great flaring nostrils who can crush you underfoot with one misstep? Yeah, pass. But I would probably have tolerated a beautiful white talbuk like this one, owned by Shevek of <Felony> on Sisters of Elune. At least until someone developed the genetically engineered flying cougar that I really wanted.

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Ensidia suspended for 72 Hours
A few hours ago, all the players involved in the Lich King 25 world first kill of Ensidia had their account suspended for 72 hours, Gamemasters also removed the achievements and loot acquired during yesterday's raid.

Date of Violation: 03/02/2010
Type of violation: Exploitation – Abuse of in-game mechanics or glitches with intent to exploit or cheat in World of Warcraft.
Details: Use of Saronite Bombs to bypass The Lich King fight mechanics Consequences for Account: Account suspended for 72 hours, all items and achievements gained removed

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I love gear.

Heck, I'm a warrior. I'm required to love gear. And even more than gear itself I love gear with something cool extra, something like Ash'kandi. Not only is Ash'kandi pretty freaking awesome, not only does it have one of the best models ever (even this far into WoW's life cycle few 2h weapons have even come close to rivaling Ash'kandi's model) but it has neat flavor text that helps establish the weapon's role in the game world. This is Anduin Lothar's sword. This is the sword of the Lion of freaking Azeroth! Possibly the greatest warrior ever to walk the land and here is his sword!

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Welcome to Scattered Shots, written by Frostheim of Warcraft Hunters Union and the Hunting Party Podcast. Each week Frostheim uses logic and science mixed with a few mugs of Dwarven Stout to look deep into the Hunter class.

The skill vs. gear debate comes up fairly often, whether it's people cursing Gearscore or cursing Recount or cursing their teammates from the Dungeon Finder. And it's not even a debate: across the board everyone agrees that skill is greater than gear. Good DPS comes from skill and that skill far outweighs the impact of gear. Gevlon's guild brought this into the spotlight in October of last year when they did Ulduar in all blues -- including Yogg-Saron.

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Lich King Encounter Video by Blood Legion
Blood Legion released a video of their Lich King kill in 10-man. Keep in mind that this is the 10-man normal mode version, I suggest that you wait for a video of the 25-man in heroic mode to see how hard/impressive the encounter can be.

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