The Lurker Lounge will soon be celebrating its 10th anniversary.  To that end, there are some upcoming changes to the site that will revamp its design and its direction.  You can read more and comment here.  Hope to have you here for the new site when it comes!

When will it come?  Soon.™  ("Soon™" copyright 2009, Blizzard Entertainment.  All rights reserved.)

Is this thing still on? Yes, I'm sorry folks. I've been very busy lately, and sadly this wonderful job had to take a backseat to a few other things. I hope to pick up the pace of updates (thanks for sticking around!) and maybe even introduce a new face or two around here! 

 So, what's been happening in WoW of late? Nothing much, really. Just this insane PTR of a little, teeny Patch 3.1. Good lord, the sheer amount of changes, additions, fixes, and everything else make this patch the talk of the town. It's impossible to pin down any one thing to talk about here, or I'd be here all night! So here's a good link to a good summary/starting place for things Patch 3.1 related.

For the Achievement hound out there, I found a breakdown of a long and involved Achievement. Lil'Game Hunter. This one requires you to acquire 75 non-combat pets. My head boggled at that number. Were there even that many IN the game? Turns out there is...and a lot more, besides. There are over 80 currently, and the aforementioned Patch 3.1 is bringing an additional 21 along as well. So, how where does one go to find 75 non-combat pets? All over the place!

Almost everyone I know has a special fondness for that trainset you get that when you put it down, everyone in the vicinity starts to do /train. Yeah...seems Blizzard agrees, and provides folks with a new toy, a Wind-Up Train Wrecker...

When someone says that, I think about tractor-trailors, as that's what my dad used to call them. However, related to WoW, it means the ability to dual spec. A lot of news was released this week about how dual specc'ing will work. PapaSmurf has started up a topic on it on our forums, and there is a lot of good stuff to read there.There is some debate raging though, as ever. Are two specs enough? Should someone have a sort of 'book' of specs to flip through? Someone on the boards has also claimed that he'd like/use up to 5 specs available to swap around to at a time. How much is too much? Or is this reasonable? If you could have more than 2 specs, would you? Realistically? Is three specs the magic number? One spec for each tree? Blizzard has stated that they still want a spec to be considered something special and not taken lightly. So it doesn't seem likely that they'll give characters a "Respec" button at the bottom of their talents list. But should they? Is providing something like that the 'ultimate' step towards "Take the player, not the class?"

 The discussion rages on.

There is a pretty decent bit going on in the WoW world, but the biggest is that Blizzard has released some planned changes for 3.1!There are some pretty sweeping changes in there, including no more consumable ammo! Dive into the discussion and see some of what's gonna change in the next big patch!

 A discussion, and it's one that I've had in /guild quite a bit. Do hybrids exist any longer? I say that they still exist, and are now more dangerous than ever to a 'pure' class. With DPS that matches or exceeds the pure in that spec, and a quick swap of spec and gear the ability to tank or heal quite well, hybrids are at a risk of putting pures out of business, as it were. Other guildies say that no, Hybrids no longer exist, at that their spec (not class, spec) deserves to keep pace with the pures in damage wihout batting an eye, sometimes doing even better. It's argued that a hybrid gives up so much to do one thing (dps, tank or heal) that they aren't really a 'hybrid' but should be considered a 'pure' spec of whatever they are doing. I find that, with the upcoming advent of dual specs, this to be a little on the crazy side. I do agree that if they want to fufill two roles, they do need to gear and spec for it, so they have to worry about 'more gear' than a pure. But then, they are doing 2 roles. A skilled hybrid player (and I know several) handle this with no problem, I know one druid who is geared for all three roles his class can perform, and is quite fearsome at doing all of them. DK's are another example. While getting one that wants to tank is hard, if you have one, he can swap up and do some pretty impressive dps. 

 So those are my thoughts. There are still Hybrids in the game, and they are 'dangerous' to the pures. This problem will exacerbate when dual specs (finally) make it into the game. What do you think?

Ghostcrawler starts us off with some reasoning behind the three big Arcane mage changes that were undocumented in the quick patch today.

 Nethaere has the entire list of patch notes for the update done today. It's all of 4 listed changes, so that really hardly qualifies as 'patch notes'.

 Massively has a pie chart showing the length of time to go from 70 to 80, now that the "dust has settled" with WotLK, and most folks who didn't choose the DK to reroll have hit 80. Not surpisingly, it took most folks 15-30 days to make it to 80.

If you are looking for some laughs, hit up the official forums. In particular, check out this post that starts with your average "such and such a class rolled on MY weapon!" whining, and quickly deteriorates when Ghostcrawler pops in and mentions that Frostmourne is going to be a Hunter Weapon...

 We'll wrap this up with a humorous look at a point that is rather dear to a lot of people. The placement of Wintergrasp, and how bloody inconvienient it makes travel to that side of the continent, especially the Eye of Eternity. A lot of folks I know just opt to pay the flightmaster to get them there instead of fussing around with trying to fly around themselves. What's your take on the placement of Wintergrasp? And would it have been so bad/hard for Blizzard to put it somewhere still accessible, but not in the middle of everything else? Maybe swap it and Sholazar, for instance...

It's late, but it's here!

 First up, non-Warcraft news. But I do have a pretty slick StarCraft II Gameplay video/"Battle Report" for you to check out. It's a long match, coming in just under 22 minutes. But there is some nice play there.

 Can't wait to know when your realm is up? Have to know as soon as possible? WoW Realm Status has got you covered. You tell it what realm, and give them your email address, and you will be notified when your realm is up. You can also set it to notify you what your realm population status is. 

 Right up the Lurker's alley,comes Lithiumflowr. He's levelling (quite quickly) from 0 to 80 without spending a single talent point.

In an interesting start, Amanda Dean wonders about those little tidbits of info that everyone knows, but no one knows. I have myself, despite playing for almost 4 years now, learned a thing or two from reading the "Helpful tips" on the loading screen. What sort of little thing do you know that you think everyone does...but might not?

For the PvP'er's among us, it seems that Ghostcrawler is hip to the problem of healing in arenas (as in, it's currently a joke...) and will be looking into it. Look for your solution "Soon" (Blizz tm)

2008 really changed the face of WoW, especially for Casual players. Robin Torres lists her thoughts on the 5 biggest changes for casuals. What are your thoughts on them?

And now, for the Warlock Buffs....'cause everyone knows the poor, maligned warlocks need buffing. ;)

100,000 seems like a big number. And in WoW, there's an Achievement attached to it. If you get 100,000 Honorable Kills, you get the Achievement. Some folks wondered how hard that one would be. But it turns out that if you are a serious PvP'er, it's not that hard at all. There's even a level 19 who has it. The trick to this Achievement, especially for the big time PvP'ers is that HK's were tracked from as soon as they were added into the game, so it was pretty easy to ret-check that, and award the Achievement. Not so much so for, say....killing C'Thun. Since you needed a piece of loot from him in the bank, or were one of the rare folks who got the quest item off of him, you didn't get the Achivement for dropping him.

 So, why are people helping Malygos? And why do we go down and beat up Sartharion? He's just minding his own business down there. Good questions indeed, and there are answers for them!

One doesn't often hear the good stories about WoW in the mainstream media. Often it's all "MMO ruins kids lives." "MMO's are eroding our social moores." Etc and so on. So it's nice to see the good side of WoW players, helping out  Katherine Allen, who's raising money for Leukemia and Lymphoma Society. She's helping her fundraising by appealing to WoW players. Each player who donates $25 and leaves a comment with either "For the Alliance" or "For the Horde" gets their name entered into a draw. She'll pick 3 names from a hat, and those three folks will get 1 year certificates for free WoW. If she hit $5,500, she'd pick one name for a lifetime WoW subscription. Last time I looked...she was at $19,910!

 A lot of folks are playing WoW. In fact, according to Blizzard, 11.5 Million are! 

By now the gifts have been unwrapped, big meals consumed, and most folks are going to spend today lazily laying about recovering. I hope that none of you are going shopping in the craziness that is Boxing Day.

 My gift to all of you is an amazing video that was found by my fiancee. It is the artist's first go at making a video (but not animating) and let me tell you this. Percula has done some stunning work in the 7 1/2 minute movie, The Craft of War:BLIND.

It seems that some folks are nostalgic for the days of 40 man raids. Frankly, I'm not. I like the new 25man cap, feeling that the fights are just as epic, but it's so much less work in the game to manage. Having been a raid leader through all sizes of fights, I have found the 25man to be the best blend between challenge in game, and challenge out of game (Arranging, etc)

 Solo'ing old stuff is all the rage of late. I have nearly solo'ed Onyxia on my hunter, but ran into a few problems. I figured them out, but ran into a time issue after that. Other folks have been quite busy making old content trivial, too. Have you been out and about doing old content, thinking "It used to take us 39 other folks and 4 hours to beat this..."

 Speaking of doing things outside of the box, Instructor Razuvious has provided several guilds with an opportunity to let their creativity show. Last time it was 3 hunters trading off aggro with kiting and distracting shot. This time, it's a couple of mages with spellsteal doing the tanking work. It's nice to see that strategy options are coming more to the fore. 

If you've managed to find a Death Knight who is actually interested in tanking instead of DPS'ing, here's a good article on how to help gear for it. 

 Winter's Veil has returned once again, bringing with it a slew of new Achievements and festive winter fun!

 Here's a really nice overview of the new pvp zone, Wintergrasp. I've been in there a few times, and it's quite a bit of fun. While I may gripe about the hassle the zone creates trying to fly around the eastern chunk of Northrend, the battle itself is fun.

 Here's a pretty nice guide to help you gear up your holy pally for crit.

 In WotLK, there are no attunements, for anything. Just hit 80? You can zone in and give Malygos a poke. But is this a good thing? Especially with Heroics? You used to need Revered (and then Honered) to get the Heroic Key. So by the time you were able to do Heroics you were usually ready (gear wise) for them. But now that there's no keys, you have folks jumping right away into Heroics, and that can make a good run a pretty brutal one. I imagine that taking the keys away is a function of not having a specific faction tied to a certain dungeon (thank god) but is there some other way to 'throttle' it a bit? 

The changes are coming fast and furious these days. Here's a huge one. All old instances are now unlocked. Molten Core no longer needs any Quintessence. Any ritual now just needs one clicker (The UBRS and Uldaman one's come to mind), the "odd' keys (such as Scepters and Mallets) are no longer needed, and you don't need an Urn to get Nightbane's attention. Wow. Just...wow...

 Now that Blizz has the PTR up, they've also got a list of currently official notes for it.