We were just talking about it on today's podcast (thrill to the sound of three people barely awake trying to coherently discuss World of Warcraft) and hey, look, Ghostcrawler reads my mind from across the interwebs. Well, okay, no, he responded to a forum thread, but it's still interesting. Yes, interesting enough that I'm going to replicate the post here before discussing it. I am out of control, a renegade, I should hand in my posting badge and keyboard.

Ghostcrawler - Re: What's wrong with an Active Mana Regen Model?
I'm not sure we'd ever do a "deal damage to heal" model. It might work for new classes, but feels like a big change to existing classes that players know and love.

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It's that time again, ladies and gentlemen! The Patch 3.3.3 PTR has been given a brand new build, and with it comes a few changes to the patch notes. There aren't many changes, but the few that are there are rather significant to the classes they impact. The changes are as follows:

Hunters

• Heart of the Phoenix: Cooldown reduced to 8 minutes, down from 10 minutes.


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Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. It's a brand new season and a brand new format, introducing judges from WoW.com and the WoW community at large -- and of course, your votes. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

Despite heaving all the saronite he could muster at the Devourer of Souls, Forgemaster Garfrost found himself devoured whole in this week's cage match. Three out of four Thunderdome judges handed the match to the Devourer, bolstered by 55.5% of the spectators. Judge Sky Paladin bore the banner for the dissenters, with a spirited account of the two bosses' meeting that delights (despite perhaps not actually swaying the vote).

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The tenth annual Game Developers Conference is in full swing in San Francisco, CA, and our sister sites Joystiq and Massively are on the scene! No matter what kind of games you're into, there's a ton of news on its way out of the convention, and we're compiling some of the stuff that might matter to you in daily roundups just for you. If you want the whole GDC news experience, check out all of Massively's and Joystiq's coverage!

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Sadly, the ultimate answer appears to be "very reluctantly" but it's an interesting read anyway. J. Allen Brack talks to G4 about WoW, consoles, and the barriers to entry for an MMO. The usual suspects apply, of course. WoW was designed for keyboards, consoles tend to have a short lifespan compared to the development time of a MMO, and WoW currently takes up about 15gb worth of memory while consoles like an XBox 360 have at most 20gb worth of hard drive space without buying any additions. This is no surprise, of course... they've said all this before.

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Every Wednesday (you know, ideally Wednesday, when he's not slacking off), Fox Van Allen grabs hold of Spiritual Guidance from her holiness Dawn Moore and makes everything just a little darker than usual. Don't worry, he usually remembers to unlock the closet and let her out when he's done. Usually.

I wanted to take a brief break from the Spiritual Guidance series on raiding Icecrown Citadel (part 1; part 2) to answer an e-mail I got in response to it, because there's a really important lesson to be learned. Or a chance to complain about stuff. I'm pretty good at that.
Why is "Stay Alive" in the strats? Are there strats where I should die? It's actually a good question. (The first part, not the second part -- we already know that only gnomes should be sacrificed on Saurfang post fix, and only then for the good luck the act brings.) Why go out of my way to state the obvious -- that your key mission is to stay alive?

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The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild happenings, raid progression rankings, player milestones and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail TheClassifieds@wow.com.

Welcome to the Uber Player Edition of The Classifieds. As you know, we've been building Random Acts of Uberness, a section of the column devoted to shout-outs to the folks who've made your PUG experiences shine. With more and more submissions every week, we're inevitably approaching that time when we'll have to start editing notes for length. But not this week. This week, your stories were so inspirational, your experiences were so uberific, that we simply decided to turn over the bulk of The Classifieds to the Random Acts section and let the uberness run wild and free.

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The World of Warcraft is an expansive universe. You're playing the game, you're fighting the bosses, you know the how, but do you know the why? Each week Matthew Rossi and Anne Stickney make sure you Know Your Lore by covering the history of the story behind World of Warcraft.

Each flight of dragons is vouchsafed with an aspect of creation itself to supervise. The five Dragon Aspects were granted their powers and dominion over Azeroth's life, magic, earth, time and more by the Titans who created them from the massive proto-dragon Galakrond in long vanished times past. In the past few KYL's we've covered Alexstrasza's Red Dragonflight, Deathwing's Black Dragonflight and its offshoot the Netherwing, and deceased Malygos' Blue Dragonflight.

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Work Warning: This video has WoW models in their underwear, and sexually suggestive themes. I Play as a Chick is one of those videos that come with amazing coordination and collaboration between artists. Yumfries, Sharm, Wick, and Tradechat got together to create this epic piece of work, and the final product is absolutely amazing. While I can't say I'm at home in the rap genre, even I could easily acknowledge the great work these folks have produced.

The video is awesome. It's been a while since the production values of a music video were so astoundingly high that I felt someone had raised the bar, but Yumfries has definitely accomplished that with I Play as a Chick. The graphics never got boring or stale, and they seemed to constantly be creating new scenery. Even if some of the video was a bit racier than some viewers would prefer, the artistry that went into it is clear.

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Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we discuss the rogue iconic ability: Stealth.

Have you ever tried to describe the rogue class to a friend or family member? I remember when a paladin acquaintance of mine asked what rogues were all about, what their secret sauce was. The question took me off guard, because I had been playing the rogue for so long that I saw everything through rogue-colored glasses. I struggled to find a simple explanation, because we are simply such a diverse class (once you overlook the pure DPS aspect, at least).

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Tired of managing her totems, Naiara of <Dissonance> on Earthen Ring is seeking a new path in life. "Ever since I won the roll on the gas mask I knew I must put my evil plan in motion!" she writes. "Never fear, this is just an ordinary mad scientist ... but this is no ordinary mad scientist! With the proper equipment, and access to Professor Putricide's laboratory, Naiara is poised to spearhead the Tauren Warlock class!"

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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. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

I'm using that picture of a Sea Mouse in The Queue today for a few reasons. First, it's disgusting and I can't wait to see all the comments. Second, this is the stuff Ghostcrawler dealt with before he was in video games. Knowing that makes one understand why he has such a sarcastic take on trolls.

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The Icecrown Citadel raid buff has been out for a week now. For the time being, it's only a 5% buff to healing, health, and damage (and let's not forget that it will affect damage absorption spells soon). It'll continue to slowly ramp up as time goes by. I know the question I've asked myself is whether or not we should have the buff active for progression bosses. There doesn't seem to be an achievement or any incentive to take down bosses without it so it becomes more of a question of "Why not?". When we were working on Blood Queen the week before the buff was up, we've had some extremely close shaves where she hit her enrage timer at 6%, then at 2% before we killed her post enrage with 6 players still standing. That 5% damage would've easily given us some extra breathing room. Cutting through trash and taking down the early wings with the buffs up means we can cut through that stuff faster and get to the hard bosses earlier. So I know for me, I'm okay with working on bosses with it up. It's only 5%. Now I just need to figure out where to draw the line.

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Every week, we broadcast live from several places worldwide (several rooms, anyway) to present you with the WoW Insider Show podcast -- an hour's worth of WoW community discussion, covering everything from the week's top stories here on WoW.com to emails from our readers to what's been going on with our particular characters in Azeroth.

Along with your hosts, WoW.com editor Michael Sacco and contributing editor Matthew Rossi, we also feature rotating guest hosts, whether regular WoW.com contributors or personalities from other sites.

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Patch 3.3.3 - Jepetto's new toys!
Jepettoy Joybuzz in Dalaran will sell 3 more items in 3.3.3! Your favorite toymaker added the following to his inventory:

• Blue Clockwork Rocket Bot 50 (Companion Pet)
• Blue Crashin' Trashin' Racer Controller 40
• Tiny Blue Ragdoll 10

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Each day WoW.com will take you through all the blue posts and other Blizzard news from around the internet. From Ghostcrawler's latest posts to the lowdown on StarCraft II and Diablo III, we'll keep you informed.

Want fat purps from Ghost? Read on... if you dare.
Table of Contents

• Ghostcrawler
• Other
• StarCraft II / Diablo III / Blizzard News

Ghostcrawler Ghostcrawler -- Mastery point threshold It's possible you will only get the benefit of the tree in which you've spent the most points, or will only get the benefit from say 50 points maximum with the bonus chosen from the tree with the most points in it. We'll have to see when the talent trees are more finalized and we start to figure out build strategies.

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Every week, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week, we save the world (of Warcraft).

Originally this week's article was going to concern stomping Karazhan from top-to-bottom as a feral/resto druid, and then I got Big Bad Wolf for the opera event. Suffice it to say that the stomping took an abrupt U-turn, and I never got pictures or video of the other Kara fights that I've successfully solo'd on dozens of other occasions (though I grant they were all occasions that did not include humiliating wipes to an overgrown dog). If I weren't in the middle of a time crunch it probably would've been doable, but regrettably I will have to run a feature on how to make 1,000 gold soloing Karazhan on a later date. In the meantime, Alaron's managed to solo Big Bad Wolf successfully, but my main is in the somewhat sticky situation of not being a night elf.

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Here at WoW.com we're on a Daily Quest (which we try to do every day, honest) to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere. Is there a story out there we ought to link or a blog we should be following? Just leave us a comment and you may see it here tomorrow!

If you're playing World of Warcraft -- and reading WoW.com -- I can't imagine you aren't looking forward to the oncoming Cataclysm, at least a little. New zones, new levels, new content -- and that razor's edge of fear where you're caught between the worry they're going to nerf your favorite class to the ground (baby) and the hope that the expansion will offer everything your virtual heart desires. It should come as no surprise that Cataclysm is on a lot of bloggers' minds... even when Blizzard isn't releasing very much info. So for today, some musing on Cataclysm and what the future of the game might hold.

• Big Bear Butt wonders if our expectations are too high.
• Critical QQ is getting tired of being told about everything that will be fixed in Cataclysm.
• Dechion's Place discusses nine things he'd like to see in Cataclysm.
• Healer Envy ponders a plan for shaman tanking.


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