So. Big news guys: The Three Worgen Moon Shirt is here. Seriously. The Shirt that will change your life, I kid you not. I ordered mine, and I have already sensed the presence of beautiful women gravitating toward the aura of self-assurance and wildness created around me by the very decision made to purchase the shirt. Nah, but seriously. There’s been stuff going on this weekend. Mostly, Patch 3.3’s been going on, and we’ve had crack teams poring over the data files and running through the dungeons getting all the latest for you. For example, here’s some video footage of some of the team running The Pit of Saron. Also, you’re going to need to convert your account to Battle.net pretty soon now. There’s much more to peruse of course, so let’s get to it. Here’s a list of some of our best news and features from the past few days. Hot News and Features The Patch 3.3 PTR got an updated build. We have the updated patch notes. Blizzard’s released a preview of the Patch 3.3 Icecrown raid. Emblems of Triumph will be the new base emblems for Patch 3.3. Run a few heroics, deck yourself out in tier 9! Blizzard’s testing haste for HoT and DoT ticks on the PTR in the form of

I don’t care for a lot of music that was made in the last decade. The Killers are something of a breather for me. They’re one of those bands I’m glad exist. When I’m forced to listen to a terrible radio station, and hear change your mind sandwiched in between auto-tuned, unoriginal dross – I’m satisfied there is still music being made that can intrigue. (Brandon Flowers has some epic bard tier 10 shoulders there too) This is part two of part two of a three part article. Confusing? Join the fun! Surprising Patch 3.3 timing, i.e. wrenches in cogs, is a blast! In our first installment, we covered pillars changing shape in great detail, and also mentioned a few other tweaks. Our second article dealt with five classes — paladin, priest, rogue, shaman, and warrior. Warlocks were left out of the 3.2.2 patch notes. This article is going to talk about the other four classes – death knight, druid, hunter, and mage. Being “TheArenaGuy” here at WoW.com lends to forcing myself to a very balanced perspective on classes. It makes me feel guilty if I understand armor penetration less than spell penetration. Well, actually, it doesn’t because ArP is confusing. The main thing

Enterprising draenei mage Mynnx of Alonsus-EU has crafted the world’s largest Lustrous Star of Elune. Unfortunately, just like in the auction house, no one is willing to pay more than two gold to buy it. Mynnx might want to consider moving her operation to Wintergrasp and building something with plus stamina. That’ll attract the PvPers. Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@wow.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, gold seller ads with dead gnomes any race at all, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran.

So as BlizzCon fades further and further from view in the rear window, I’m getting more and more excited and impatient for news of Cataclysm, so much so that I’ve sort of forgotten to get excited about Patch 3.3. I want Worgen, and new conflicts, and new lore, and a redesigned old world that offers a massive leap forward in the story as things change forever and the Horde and Alliance finally shrug off all pretense of peace and rush headlong into a war that has really never truly ended. But then I start thinking. The combo I really wanted to play, Worgen Paladin, looks like it won’t make it in. It seems like Worgen may not get their own capital city (instead, said city will become a battleground under siege by the Forsaken), which may put a damper on how much their awesome quasi-Victorian scenery and architecture actually features in game. While some zones are getting complete revamps, others are only getting minor tweaks, which makes me fear there may be some zones that still feel out of place and some old lore story lines that still remain unresolved or out of place. Now, I don’t mean to be a complete downer here. I still love Blizzard and the dev team, but sometimes I don’t agree with them,

Since I have some extra time while I wait for my Mage to finish his looting animation, I thought I’d post a quick primer on the Mage changes patch 3.2.2 has brought us. There are only three (well, three and a half, I guess), but all three are of significant import. I posted about them in an Arcane Brilliance column way back when this patch first hit the PTR, but a lot has changed since then. Let’s look at each change in turn. Arcane Arcane Blast: The buff from using this ability now stacks up to 4 times instead of 3, and each application increases mana cost by 175% instead of 200%. In addition, the duration of the buff has been reduced to 6 seconds. Though not nearly as drastic a change as it was at the start of the PTR, this is still very nice. That fourth stack means whatever spell you throw out to consume the buff will do a whopping 60% more damage, and the mana cost increase isn’t nearly the killer it used to be, even with four stacks. Plus, none of that matters anyway, since you won’t actually be using any mana on the spell you consume your Arcane Blast buff with, because that spell will be free. “Why,” you ask? Because that spell will be Arcane Missiles. “But Arcane Missiles

There’s not much that says “festivities” like a pirate drinking ale. At least, that seems to be the general WoW.com opinion on the matter. There’s more than one or two of us who’ll be knocking back a pint and donning our very best Arrrrrrrr! for the weekend. While last weekend was a time for many of your intrepid reporters to hit DDO Unlimited, we’re all returning home to check out Brewest and Pirate’s Day. Really, I think it’s the ale. It’s a little bit of the inner dwarf coming out in all of us. Well, except for Adam. He’s going to be off having a real life and such. No Pirates for him! Adam Holisky: (@adamholisky) – The weekend began for me on Wednesday when we saw @thatkevinsmith in Minneapolis, and for the actual weekend we’re going to the Minnesota Renaissance Festival and catching one of the last Twins games in the Metrodome. As you can tell, this is a WoW free weekend. Why? Because I value my significant other and saying anything like “damn Resto Druids” or “OMGWTF? l2tank” would pretty much ensure that I’d be going to these events by myself next year. Alex Ziebart: (@aziebart) – I’ll be doing Pirates and