We are currently holding a live chat to discuss the recently released WoW book: Night of the Dragon. Feel free to check it out and contribute to the conversation, ask questions, or just watch.

Read more about it here.

Blizzard certainly don't have any worries about their finances, even in the current economical climate. This is good news for those of us who enjoy their games, but it's also good for smaller companies who are associated with Blizzard. With well known retailers and manufacturers going into receivership all around us, a little business in Florida with 14 employees is flourishing, and no doubt their ties to Blizzard are partly to thank for it.

Epic Weapons are the people who make and sell Frostmourne, the real-life replica of Arthas' infamous runeblade. Collectors can buy the sword from their site for $379 now, but the #1 Frostmourne sold in an auction for more than $20,000. Epic Weapons also sell other replica items from films and TV shows, and their revenue for this year is expected to exceed $2 million.

"We believe the gaming industry is very logical" said Michael Hawkins, chairman of Epic Weapons. "We take something from inside a game and make it real."

After such a roaring success, can we expect to see another replica sword from the game any time soon, and if so, which sword will it be? Remember this story we ran not long ago? In August, Blizzard took out the patent to sell none other than Ashbringer, the sword that will almost certainly have a key part in bringing the Lich King down. Get saving those pennies...

Read the full interview with Epic Weapons over on FloridaToday.com.

Blizzard have really pulled out all the stops with the music in Wrath of the Lich King. The first time we got a good chance to listen to it was in the cinematic. That chilling vocal as Arthas makes his way to Sindragosa's Fall is enough to make the hairs stand up on the back of anyone's neck, and that's just on a computer screen. Take it from me, when you see it on a full-size cinema screen with booming sound, like in the opening ceremony at BlizzCon 2008, it pretty much chokes you up (even if you're not a huge fan of the cinematic itself). The theme continues in the expansion, every zone has its own distinct yet fitting soundtrack, which is instantly recognisable after a short time spent in game.

Does everyone appreciate it though? I know several people who have their own music pumping out of their headphones as they level or PvP, it seems almost the norm nowadays. Personally, I enjoy the sounds of the game and the atmosphere each zone theme creates.

How about you, do you soak up the in-game sounds and music as you play, or drown it out with heavy rock or maybe a bit of drum'n base?

World of Warcraft: Night of the Dragon is the long-awaited follow-up to Warcraft: Day of the Dragon. Richard A. Knaak fleshed out a set of intermingled events that keep you reading in expectation of what would happen next. Danger lurks everywhere. Without, but even more within Grim Batol. Back on 2001, when Warcraft: Day of the Dragon hit bookstores, World of Warcraft was still in early development. The author had to rely on his skills, Chris Metzen (VP of Creative Design) and the dubbed Warcraft Bible to write Day of the Dragon.

With World of Warcraft now reaching its 4th Anniversary, Richard A. Knaak was able to take advantage of the geography and fauna of Azeroth. From Ratchet's goblins and Bloodsail Buccaneer pirates to Wetlands' dangerous oozes, crocolisks and raptors.

Day of the Dragon ... Night of the Dragon ... The first question that comes to mind with the cliché title is ... Has Deathwing returned, is he alive? Everything seems to point out the Earth-Warder is behind what transpires in the story. Yet the answer is continuously evaded and prolonged. That question is not answered well until the very end of the novel.

The story has a few well-known characters converging into the same location individually and separately. Each with their own mission and goal. Iridi is a draenei priestess sent from Exodar to retrieve something that has been stolen to them by a Blood Elf, after murdering her draenei companion. Her second mission is ... to find and destroy a nether dragon. The fake trails that set her looking all around Kalimdor for the blood elf came to an end, as she picks on the rightful trail and seeks to secure transportation in Ratchet. Her destination ... Menethil Harbor.

Vereesa Windrunner comes to Wetlands for motives of her own. Her twin offsprings were almost kidnapped by a blood elf she knows very well, in an attempt to sate his thirst for magic. She won't be at ease or sleep well for as long as the blood elf remains loose out there. Her hunting, incredibly, brings her to that dreaded place she fought at during the second war. Grim Batol.

Simon & Schuster is now accepting pre-orders of World of Warcraft: Arthas here.

More of the review here

We've just finished updating our content pages with two new additions. You can now check out the full loot tables for Ahn'kahet: The Old Kingdom, and The Violet Hold. The listings include Heroic drops. Check them out by clicking the links below!



As always, we're grateful for contributors to our content pages. We like to keep our community up to date on everything WoW, so if you'd like to join us and help out, .(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)

More reviews for you today, the first comes from Videogamer who are just the latest site to bestow praise on the expansion. PC Zone magazine also recently issued their review which scored the game an 86/100 according to Gamerankings. This is actually the lowest score for the game yet. It's not a low score by any means, but they obviously had a few issues with WotLK.

The World of Warcraft: Night of the Dragon novel by Richard A. Knaak hit bookstores on November 18. It's been nearly two weeks, and most fans have read through the book. Lore fans are invited to discuss the book's storyline and to share opinions and ideas. We will peel off this novel to analyze what it may foreshadow to the lore and to World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King (MMO). Unconfirmed rumor might be spawn from this novel that the next content patch could be a Grim Batol dungeon.

There are a few details in the novel that clearly marks the time-frame the events happen in. Anveena's sacrifice at the Sunwell Plateau is mentioned by an angry Kalecgos who shoved it at Krasus, blaming him.

This is mostly a fans chat with full spoilers. Only attend if you have read the book, or don't mind spoilers, or the book won't be available in your country for a long time and you wish to learn more of its content.

The fans chat will take place on Sunday, November 30 at 1:00 pm EST (New York) or 6pm (UK).

With the launch of WotLK, many people have returned to the game. For someone who hasn't played in a few months, there are many changes to face when logging back in. In a recent forum thread by a returning player, Twoflower, Shellar, Clevins and many more of you put together a list of some things they ought to know:

• Achievements!
  
• +heal is gone, spellpower is in its place.
  
• You can only consume one pot of ANY type during a fight.
  
• There are various glyphs which modify spells. Glyphs are created by the Inscription profession.
  
• Downranking? Gone. Well, technically not, but lower ranks of a spell cost the same or more mana for less effect
  
• Death Knights are here!
  
• Spellpushback changed : you can only get pushed back twice now, you are immune after the second push back.
  
• All tank classes can AoE tank now. Forget cc in leveling instances.
  
• New flying is from lvl 77.
  
• Lvl 70-71 instances : Utgarde keep does not have prequests, you can pick up 2 quests just at the entrance. The nexus does have 3 long quest chains to do before you go in, I'd say 2-3 hours till you have all the quests that lead in there. the nexus quest chains start just at the flying point where you land.
  
• Despite many cool little changes, generally the classes play the same.
  
• Dont rush for lvl 80, there is not much to do yet. only 3 raids, and they are all pushovers. enjoy the questing.
  
• A number of spells that couldn't crit before are now capable of doing so. For Mages, this includes Blizzard. For priests, it's Mind Flay. Furthermore, Shadowform now increases the damage from all DoTs by a percentage equal to the priest's crit chance.
  
• Player-cast raid buffs have been consolidated. With a couple of exceptions, any buff that can be placed by one class/spec can also be cast by another, and buffs of the same type don't stack (for example, Battle Shout shares a 'buff slot' with Blessing of Might)
  
• Pretty much all group buffs are now raidwide (this includes totems, auras, drums and Bloodlust). VE and PoH healing are notable exceptions to this.
  

What else would you tell someone who was returning to WoW now after a break?

The Archavon encounter was trivial due to the quality of the items for PvP users giving players very powerful gear too often. Interestingly, Blizzard did not address this by reducing the quality of the gear stats, as the fans had demanded. Instead the encounter difficulty was increased, and the reset timer was extended. Some may find this more adequate and fitting a decision than the former. Slorkuz said at the WoW-Europe forums the following:

	Blizzard Quote:
	Slorkuz: Due to the high quality of the items attainable through the Archavon encounter in Wintergrasp, we are going to be making some changes. To keep the encounter in line with the rewards, we have changed the Raid Lock from a 3-day to a 7-day timer. Additionally, we have raised Archavon’s hit points, in heroic, to keep the quality of item on par with the challenge of the encounter.

We’re two weeks into the expansion and things appear to be going well. The hard-chargers are already at 80 and complaining that they’re bored, the queues have abated and the Outlands are no longer flush with sparkling new Death Knights.

I myself took this morning to celebrate by grinding out some cooking and complete Friend or Fowl?



What kind of things are you thankful for in the lands of Azeroth? Is it all the new content and challenges, recipes to gather or all the new opportunities to gank and grief?

So push back from the table after that feast, and drop a comment or two.

My Warrior is a Blacksmith, and I've been making a tidy sum from the armor and accessories I can now craft and sell, such as the Eternal Belt Buckle, and my best seller, the Helm of Command. I usually collect all the mats myself, but I was short of an Eternal Fire the other evening, so I made my way to the Auction House.

I almost fell off my seat when I saw the price Eternal Fires were going for (around 150G at the time). I'd been picking them up the lesser type, Crystallized Fire, pretty regularly from Titanium ore nodes, but I'd reached the end of my supplies and needed another Eternal. For some reason, Eternal Fire sells for almost 10 times as much as all the other Eternals.

Now, I'll probably receive hate mail from some people for revealing this, the same people that have been making gold hand over fist for doing virtually nothing, but this extortion has been going on for too long! See after the break for instructions on where to get Crystallized Fire, Crystallized Water and Crystallized Air in no time at all.

Dual Specs, the juicy upcoming feature that Blizzard talked about at BlizzCon last month, is something we're all looking forward to eagerly. During BlizzCon, developer GhostCrawler explained a little about it:

We want players to be literally be able to be in, for example, a raid and say "Ok I'm going to swap over to my other spec for this next fight". We don't want it to be complicated, not a lot of running back into town or things like that, it should be easy. You're not necessarily going to be able to switch from your Arms Warrior as someone's running in on you in an Arena, but if you like to tank on the weekends and PvP on the weekdays, this is exactly the kind of thing that will let you do that.

So here is what we know so far:

• Players will somehow have two specs saved to their character
  
• They will be able to swap between these pre-saved specs at will including during raids
  
• However, Blizzard have said that swapping during an Arena match will not be allowed
  
• This will be available to all classes

This is fantastic news for everyone, even if it means you personally won't benefit much from it. For example, a Holy Priest or Protection Warrior isn't much fun to play solo, so many players with these classes spec DPS while they are leveling or taking part in PvP. With this new system in place, it's much more likely that there will be plenty of healers and tank available for instances, since all they'll have to do is switch spec at no cost for the instance, then switch back to DPS afterwards.

Eh Up Tonnipeards!

Who am I? Best give a quick intro before I launch into my debate. I'm Thog, a senior officer in a semi-social, semi-raiding guild on Wildhammer-EU (All I will say for now is "For Ravenswing and Victory!"). I've played WoW on and off for nearly 4 years (well I can't lie and say a longer time seeing as the 4th anniversary of the game we all know and love is splashed all over) and I'm thoroughly addicted to playing my hunter, slowly levelling him in the wastes of Northrend, trying to decide whether I prefer Grizzly Hills or Zul'Drak. Although those new Death Knights do look tempting...

I know you are all wondering, deep deep down in your souls "What is a Tonnipeard?!?". Well I'm going to make you wait to find out. Maybe one day...

Anyway, I want to ask a question for now, so please respond to this post with your opinions, and I'll comment on the results next time I post.

What sort of guild are you in now? Is it social, semi-raiding, hardcore raiding? If you raid, are there loads of restrictions on what you have to do to raid?

Do you enjoy playing in this sort of guild more than any other type of guild? Are you a hardcore raider and sometimes you really really wish that you could spend all day typing /love to a chicken?

Okay, technically I know that's actually more than one question, but it's my post so meh. (Did anyone see meh is now a word in the Collins English Dictionary?) Anyway, have a think, reply to me and tell me what you think!

Looking for a new graphics card, thinking about upgrading, or maybe a Christmas present for a WoW player? The folks over at ExtremeTech have posted a new review of a comparison between ATI and nVidia graphics cards, specifically looking at the Wrath of the Lich King expansion:

World of Warcraft is known for its ability to run very well on a wide variety of PCs, and to date hasn't been very strenuous on PC graphics hardware. The new Wrath of the Lich King expansion (or more precisely, the major patch that preceded it) added some notable changes that can actually push modern graphics hardware.

We asked Kalos, our resident hardware expert from our Tech forum to take a look and give his opinion on this comparison:

"They seem to have gone about this well. Would have been nice to include some mainsteam cards for perspective; but I don't think that was their angle anyhow. It does prove that WoW stands to benefit from higher grade graphics cards though. I like it."

We asked him what graphics card he would personally recommend if someone was looking for a card that would run WotLK well, but would also be easy on the wallet:

"The Nvidia's Geforce 9800 GT is an absolute steal," he continued "it's a nice goer at a low cost; Around $120 for our American friends, £85 for us here in the UK." Being the huge Starcraft fan that he is, Kalos also added "The 9800 GT is the card I put into the 'future' rig design for the Starcraft II PC. I'm convinced it'll do the job."

If you'd like to read Kalos' full recommendation for StarCraft II hardware, see his very informative article over on StarCraftWire.net.

Read the full nVidia vs ATi comparison at ExtremeTech.

Thanks Snodge.

Blue poster Wryxian has announced another bout of free characters migrations on EU realms:

	Blizzard Quote: (Source)
	The following Free Character Migration will be available from November 26th to December 2nd: Al'Akir => Dentarg, Xavius Argent Dawn => Darkmoon Faire, Steamwheedle Cartel, The Sha'tar Burning Legion => Ahn'Qiraj, Daggerspine Crushridge => Bladefist, Karazhan Drak'thul => Burning Blade, Deathwing Grim Batol => Dentarg, Xavius Magtheridon => Zenedar, Haomarush (Horde only) Neptulon => Ahn'Qiraj, Daggerspine Outland => Bladefist, Karazhan Ravencrest => Burning Blade, Deathwing Sylvanas => Auchindoun, Lightning's Blade Twilight's Hammer => Auchindoun, Lightning's Blade Additionally please note we also have free character migration from some realms to the new realm Chamber of Aspects. For more information, please check the following thread: http://forums.wow-europe.com/thread.html?topicId=6848456286&sid=1

The Writers Guild of America, Hollywood writers union and Screen Actors Guild claim that Film studios aren't fulfilling their agreement after the strike held a year ago. The writers and actors want to be paid royalties for internet reruns on Films made after 1971 and TV shows made after 1977 as the agreement stipulated. The film studios want to pay royalties for internet reruns for films and shows made after February 13, 2008.

There is obviously a great deal of problems ahead of the industry if this dispute is not settled. If a new strike is held, this could potentially affect the development of the World of Warcraft film ... yet again. As of two weeks ago, Frank Pearce revealed a screenwriter and a director have not been appointed by Legendary Pictures to date. This process would gain further delays if the strike becomes reality in upcoming weeks. -- Read more.

The two unions appear to be reading from the same script with an eye to disrupting the upcoming Hollywood awards season, much as last year’s strike abbreviated the Golden Globes.

“If, God forbid, we should go on strike, you want to do it at a time when it has the most impact,” Guild president Alan Rosenberg told The Associated Press Monday. “We want to use whatever leverage we can muster.”

Great news; the latest version of the WoW addon Atlas is out now. This superb mod allows users to see full dungeon maps with the locations of bosses, and also includes battlegrounds, outdoor bosses, locations of dungeons and flight paths!

Download Atlas from WoWUi now.



Also, don't forget the plugin AtlasLoot Enhanced. This allows you to look up faction rewards, boss drops in every instance (it even includes drop rates) and has full listings of the crafting professions, and what they can make.

Download AtlasLoot Enhanced from WoWUI now.

As revealed at BlizzCon, Blizzard intend to introduce swimming for our existing ground mounts in the next content patch. This is something a lot of players are really looking forward to, me included, but it's especially frustrating to know that it's done and ready, we just won't see it for several weeks.

When we asked Jeffrey Kaplan what we could expect to see in the first content patch after WotLK, he told us a bit about the new swimming mount feature:

We're going to make it so all ground mounts can swim. Players always found it very disturbing that you'd be in Un'goro Crater and you're riding along on your mount and you hit that one little bit of water and suddenly you have to resummon the mount again. Shaman for quite some time have enjoyed how it feels on Ghost Wolf when you hit the water, yeah you slow down but at least you keep swimming and if it's just a small patch of water you pick up speed again. So that's definitely something we had initially wanted to get into WotLK, it didn't quite make it but it will definitely be in the patch that follows, it's already complete as a matter of fact.

The first content patch of The Burning Crusade came out in June 2007, four months after the release of the expansion. Do we really have to wait that long, or can we hope that the feature will be added before then?

Catch our whole interview with WoW's Game Director, Jeffrey Kaplan, over on IncGamers.

Today should be a happy day. I should be celebrating my first level 80 character, but I'm not, and I'm kinda grouchy. You see, I have a quest buddy and although he's one of my best friends, heck - he's the guy who got me into WoW, he's a little too casual if you know what I mean.

We thought it would be a great idea to go through all the content together, I mean, at exactly the same time. He's on his Priest and I'm on my Warrior, so we make a great team. We have Quest Helper and Quest Announce, so we know what quests to do next and we know where the other person is in terms of items collected etc. We've completed all our quests in Northrend side by side so far apart from the odd daily. However, I generally play more than him so when he's not online I'm left with a few options: level my professions, do daily quests, do instances or level another character. So here's where I'm at right now: Mining 450/450, Blacksmithing 441/450, done all my dailies every day, done every instance and my Death Knight is level 61.

I was particularly looking forward to logging on last night though; I had 16 bars until level 80, almost two full levels in front of my friend just from all the extra dailies and instance runs I'd done, and we were pretty confident we could burn through the remainder of my xp bar before we had to log off for the night. It started really well, but around 3 hours into it, he had to go help his dad with something. "brb matey" he said as he went afk.

When Wrath of the Lich King was announced, New Dances were something that Blizzard was keen to tell us about. It was right up there with destructible buildings, new hairstyles and increased level cap. However, the expansion's out and our new dances are nowhere to be seen.

We spoke to WoW's Game Director Jeffrey Kaplan at BlizzCon, and asked him when we will be seeing our new dances:

We initially wanted to get the dance studio feature in as part of Wrath of the Lich King. As development progressed, we felt there wasn't enough content to substantiate the feature. We love the feature, we want to move forward with it, we still have developers working on the feature, but we don't feel like it's robust enough. Right now if we released it people would go
"What that's all we're getting? That's not enough dances that we wanted to see," so we decided to hold it and we hope to bring it out at a later date with more content behind it.

On the official forums yesterday, blue poster Crygil emphasized that we shouldn't expect to see them too soon:

	Blizzard Quote: (Source)
	New dances are something we would still like to add. However, we will not add dances until we feel that they meet with our highest standards. So these are something we can look forward to down the road, not in the near future.

Considering new dances were something Blizzard were really excited about when they announced the expansion, what could have pushed them to the back burner?