As frag reports, the expected (eagerly in some quarters) addition of a warrior protection tree talent called Vitality that would provide a bonus to a warrior's stamina will not make the 1.11 release.  Tseric explains:

Oh boy, are you going to hate me for this, but it's better we get it out of the way now.

Vitality in 1.11 will be removed. The devs want to use this talent, but don't like its placement in the tree. Again, they want to use this talent, but it is not fitting right for them now.

This change went in on Friday, so it was not reflected in the PTR build.

/fireresistpotion

You may now supply your feedback to this issue.

The forums are back online now after being hacked yesterday.  Here's the details:

A hacker group used a known posting exploit method on older versions of the forum software to gain admin access to the system.  Their interests were not in damage of the forum system itself, but rather in abusing it to target its userbase to install trojan horse virii.  A mass email was sent to all Lurker Lounge forum users containing a link to install such a trojan, and the forum's HTML code was modified to do the same.

I had removed the inserted HTML code once I heard of the problem; however, the forum itself had to be shut down to prevent the system from being compromised again.  The software has been upgraded (re-installed) to close the exploit.  As far as I can see, no posts were lost and no further damage was done.

It is strongly recommended, if you haven't already, to check your system for viruses if you visited the forums yesterday and noticed odd behavior (window popups, external script executions).

Thanks go to everyone who was quick to alert me of the trouble yesterday, and to all who offered to help.  Enjoy the new forum features and please do let me know if anything is behaving strangely with the new functionality.

The Lurker Lounge forums have apparently been hacked.  Some script appears to run when you go on the forums.  Until Bolty gets a chance to take a look at the problem, I suggest that you avoid the LL forums for now.  We apologize for the inconvenience.

UPDATE:  Bolty has taken down the forums and is patching a security hole in the forum software.  He expects that the forums will be back up and running sometime on Sunday.  Meanwhile, Bolty writes, "If you visited the forum earlier and noticed strange behavior, I recommend you check your computer for any potential virus infections. Also, any mass emails coming from The Lurker Lounge should be ignored and deleted."

The official "Under Development" page was updated with a few new pieces of information.  Some items that caught my eye were:

New available flight path destinations have been added:
1. Ratchet
2. Marshall's Refuge, Un'Goro Crater.

It's about time!  Many new flight paths have been added, too.

After a disconnect from the server, it will be possible to log back in immediately, instead of receiving the message, "A character with that name already exists."!

Nice.

Casters rejoice (and druids too)! A new LEGENDARY item quest will be available in patch 1.11!

So, the legendary caster item involves some sort of quest or quest line.

Dozens of new quests will be available in Light's Hope Chapel and with new quests come new reward items of superior and epic quality!

Sounds good, but we'll have to see if "dozens" means like four per class or whether it means dozens that a particular player can pursue.  Also, we'll have to wait to see how many of these quests can be done outside of Naxxramas.

A new Q&A with Blizzard's Jeff Kaplan appeared on Gamespot that had some interesting new information about the Burning Crusade.  Two items that caught my attention were:

GS: What do you have planned in terms of player versus player for the expansion?

JK: We're building a PVP objective into every new Outland zone for outdoor world PVP. They're different for each zone. Hellfire Peninsula actually has three objectives that are very close to each other. Picture an outdoor Arathi Basin that's always ongoing. We're going to have some other big announcements that have to do with the PVP system, but that will be closer to launch, so we're not ready to talk about that yet.

GS: Will there be a combination bonus that will encourage players to use different gem types?

JK: We don't want players focused like, "All I want are intellect gems; that's all I care about," so we have a system, we don't really have a name for it yet, but it's almost like gem sets or metagems. For example, I can socket in this gem that does +12 strength if four blue gems are equipped. There are these gems that will make me shake up my normal socket system, like one that does +4 agility per different-colored gem, so if I keep mixing up gems, I get more agility.

The shaman talent trees got another tweek today.  Some changes that were noted by one of The Core's shaman were:

• Totemic Focus
  Old: 5 ranks of -2% totem cost (completely wasted talent points)
  New: 5 ranks of -5% totem cost (not so bad)
• Ancestral Healing
  Old: 5 ranks of increase target armor by 5% after heal crit.
  New: 3 ranks of increase target armor by 8% after a crit.
• Totemic Mastery
  Old: 1 point increase friendly totems 5 yards (good not great).
  New: 1 point increase friendly totems by 10 yards does not stack with 3 piece Earthfury. (This doubles the area of effect of most totems and shaman are no longer shackled into wearing Earthfury items)
• In elemental they swapped position of improved range and the enhancement critical melee strike talent.

Take a look at the changes and let your fellow Lurkers know what you think!

Zarathustra reports his finding that Hurricane's supposed 1-5 frost damage isn't really frost damage.  Apparently, he writes, other people are having the same problem.  This is particularly important for guilds trying to kill Viscidus, because Hurricane no longer becomes the weapon of choice for hunters trying to help in the freezing process.  Other weapons with supposed elemental damage on them are being investigated, too.

Late edit: As Concillian reported, it has been confirmed that this problem only affects ranged weapons.  Elemental damage from melee weapons work fine.

Straight from the official World of Warcraft Community Site, here are some links to various E3 related articles and interviews.

Check out the recent coverage of World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade from the floor of E3!

• WoW Vault: Sprawl's Massive E3 Coverage
• Ten Ton Hammer: Two Interviews
• Ten Ton Hammer: Photo Gallery
• WorldofWar.net Video Interview: Tom Chilton Part I
• WorldofWar.net Video Interview: Tom Chilton Part II
• WorldofWar.net Video Interview: Scott Mercer Part I
• WorldofWar.net Video Interview: Scott Mercer Part II
• GameSpot Interview: Jeffrey Kaplan
• WorldofWar.net Day One Notes
• TenTonHammer hits The Burning Crusade
• GameSpot
• Joystiq
• GameSpy
• World of Warcraft: Shadow of the Necropolis

No one fan site (including this one!) has it all. To truly understand every facet of the game, the die-hard fan should never neglect the top sites in the scene. Here's a list of what we feel are the top sites for World of Warcraft on the Internet - the ones you shouldn't pass over in your quest to know everything about the game.

General Information

• The official World of Warcraft Community Site.  This is where all of the official 
  World of Warcraft related news announcements are made by Blizzard.
• Allakhazam.  Allakhazam has the most extensive collection of item, quest, mob, NPC, and tradeskill information in the game. If you're having trouble finding Echeyakee, head here.
• Thotbott.  A direct competitor of Allakhazam, Thotbott also has an extensive archive of information on items, quests, mobs, NPC's, and tradeskills.  The information on the site is good. However, ever since Thotbott was bought by a gold-selling company, many players have spurned the site in favor of its competitors.
• Worldofwar.net.  The "unofficial World of Warcraft site."  Worldofwar.net tries to be a jack of all trades and has forums, hosts articles, has an item and mod database, and hosts live chats and events.
• The Goblin Workshop.  The Goblin Workshop is another game data collection site, similar to Allakhazam and Thotbott.

Strategy Sites

• The Amazon Basin.  The Amazon Basin is a guild that "serves as a safe haven against cheating, racism, bigotry, hatred, and unfair gameplay. Members conduct themselves in a manner which promotes the fun of the game and prosperity of the guild and its members."  Its boards are also a fantastic place to discuss strategy and game mechanics, even if you are not an official member of the guild.
• Elitist Jerks.  The Elitist Jerks is also a guild website where even those who aren't elitist jerks can find good strategy discussions.
• Wowwiki.  Wowwiki has a variety of instance guides, maps, formulae, and just general information on the World of Warcraft.  It's a useful site, but be careful about depending on it too heavily, since some of the information on particular boss encounters has been shown to be inaccurate.
• WoW Guru.  WoW Guru hosts a variety of strategy guides as well as an item database similar to Allakhazam and Thotbott.

Specialized Information

Some sites like to specialize.  Some good ones are:

• Kaldorei World Map.  A map of Azeroth.
Kaliban's Class Loot Lists.  Kaliban's fills an interesting niche in that it lists all of the items that might be of interest to different classes and class builds as a way to help players plan what instances would be best to run to get the items that they want.
Wowhead's Talent Calculator.  This talent calculator is faster and easier to use than the one that Blizzard publishes.
Good Intentions.  This page has a wonderful summary of hunter pet abilities and how you get them.
Merciless Damage Reduction Calculator
WoW Equip.  A damage calculator for rogues.
The Warlocks Den.  This is an excellent resource for all things having to do with warlocks.
ShadowPanther.net.  ShadowPanther details where to get resist gear for rogues along with other rogue specific information.

Mod and 3rd Party UI Sites

Unlike most MMORPG's before it, World of Warcraft has an elaborate built-in scripting system that allows players to alter the user interface extensively.  Some of the more popular sites that contain UI libraries are:

• Curse-Gaming
• WoWInterface
• Unofficial WoW UI Site
• CTMod. CTMod is the home of the ever popular CT_RaidAssist.