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

Geez Louise, that seems like an awful lot of effort for just some cookies, don't you think?

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Yo dawg. Blizz heard you like heals, so they put a heal on your heal so you can heal while you heal. Was that a traumatic sentence to read? Sorry, couldn't help it, but I'll claim that I dropped that meme in honor of today's Phat Loot Phriday weapon: Trauma. Not only are the stats on this one-handed mace pretty sexy, but it was the beneficiary of a recent fix. (The heal it procs was only affecting folks in the same group as the person who received the heal, not anyone else in the raid.)

Also? It's totally a bunch of skulls with horns lashed together.

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At the very end of last year, It came from the Blog got together to celebrate the Feast of Winter Veil. We slaughtered dragonhawks for their young in order to bake cookies. We bribed Greatfather Winter. We pretended we cared about what the real message behind the holiday was. And we threw snowballs at Cairne. But mostly, we had fun!

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Are you wondering what has caused all the ruckus in the raiding community the past few days? Have you been typing your fingers to the bone since Wednesday night, arguing for one side or the other in forums and chat channels? Whoever you are, or whatever side you're on, in the still-burning aftermath of Ensidia's ban, I feel some reflection is needed. Thus, I am going explain, to the best of my ability, what happened to cause such uproar in the raiding community this week. I am also going to, as the title implies, offer my speculations.

For those of you not up to speed, let me summarize what happened in the past day. On Wednesday evening, the guild Ensidia defeated the Lich King encounter in 25-man Icecrown Citadel. Not long after that, Blizzard performed a hotfix to the game, disabling the damage dealt by Saronite Bombs and Global Thermal Sapper Charges. Blizzard stated that the hotfix was made to temporarily deal with a bug that was causing the bombs to rebuild the Frozen Throne platform during the Lich King encounter. Ensidia then updated their original post in response to the hotfix, saying that the bug did affect their kill, but that they did not know that it was the bombs specifically that was causing the platform to rebuild during every attempt, because their rogues always use Saronite Bombs in their DPS rotation. Blizzard, in response to a question about whether or not Ensidia would receive a temporary ban for the bug, then stated:
"It is not our policy to discuss disciplinary action for exploitation. With that said, we take exploits very seriously and will action players that use exploits to overcome an encounter.

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Ready Check is a column focusing on successful raiding for the serious raider. Hardcore or casual, Vault of Archavon or Icecrown Citadel, everyone can get in on the action and down some bosses.

Professor Putricide is the final boss in the Plagueworks. He's kind of the R&D guy for the Lich King's slime armies. If you recall from fighting Rotface, Putricide is the guy who's constantly screaming about what good news it is that the slime is working again. Frankly, I'm mostly motivated to kill the guy to get him to shut up about the slime.

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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. Mike Sacco will be your host today.
Well, hey there, team! Looks like we're gonna be riding this elevator for a while. I guess now would be a great time to answer some reader questions.

Tomatketchup asked...

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We (and the rest of the geek world) loves ourselves some Penny Arcade, and today's comic is worth mentioning given its commentary on Blizzard's latest plans for a premium iPhone/iPod Touch/iPad auction house and armory application. First it starts with a simple auction house app, then a rogue app, and then the iHeal.

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The Care and Feeding of Warriors is here to hurt things this week. Hurt them, make them bleed, make them die, stand over their corpses and find something else to kill. Hear the warsong hammering in your ears? Let it out. Let it out and show the world your rage. Matthew Rossi knows that sometimes, dead is better.

Last week, we talked about Protection. Protection warriors are the tanks of the warrior class, the guys who stand up there and bang on their shields and bang their shields into things ranging the gamut from large horrible squamous tentacle monsters in Old Kingdom to giant walking bone piles in ICC. And that's fine: somebody has to keep the monsters and bosses of the game focused on a hard target so the rest of us can kill it. It's good to see prot warriors alongside bears, walking corpses and daisy picking fancylads doing the tank job. (I kid you paladins because my heart is black and full of envy.) It's good that there are warrior tanks.

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You might remember Melvenor from his previous work, the Ballad of Matthias Lehner. He's now followed up with the Echoes of Lordaeron, which is (I think) a final homage piece to a roleplay thread than ran all through Wrath of the Lich King. As the story goes, Echoes of Lordaeron tells the tale of two soldiers who were friends before the wars. After the final defeat of Arthas, the two men have a final catharsis, as they both come to grips with what happened in Icecrown.

The thing that really struck me about Echoes of Loraderon wasn't the story or even the voiceovers. What really rocked me about the movie was just how sheer darn beautiful it was. This is one of those movies that felt like wall-to-wall eye candy. I don't know if some of these shots come from in-game cinematics, but if Melvenor created all of this from scratch . . . well, I sure as heck hope he keeps doing it.

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The in-game holiday Love Is In the Air begins Sunday, running February 7th (3:00 am server time) through February 21st (3:00 am server time) this year. Doing most of the achievements related to the holiday will reward you with the meta Fool for Love, the title "the Love Fool," and one more notch in the long trek toward What A Long, Strange Trip It's Been.

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Update - Ensidia just posted a statement on their site.

Yes it seems this bug does relate to our kill. We had no idea that our Rogues using Saronite Bombs in their rotation (as they always do) was causing it and thusly it occured every try we did. Short version, we're not going to stop trying the boss when all we are doing is playing our normal game. It would be nice if these kinds of things, much the same as Holy Wrath on Anub, were tested before release.

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