On a slow news day, while responding to a post asking about possibly adding scripted events to 5-man dungeons, Tseric revealed a tiny hint about the Hellfire Citadel, a 5-man instance that will be released in the expansion:

I imagine there will be a fair amount of scripted events and lore in a place like Hellfire Citadel. While I'm not exactly sure how this may play out, I am fairly confident the devs will apply lessons learned from other instances into new encounters.

Particularly in a place like Kharazhan. The opera house is practically begging for script :P

Eyonix writes:

Once, Kel'Thuzad was not very different from the other magi of Dalaran. Ambitious, maybe, perhaps more radical in his convictions, but certainly not more powerful than his peers. Yet it was Kel'Thuzad the Lich King made into a key figure of the Scourge's remorseless assault on the lands of the living. Now, the man named Kel'Thuzad is gone, and all that remains is Kel'Thuzad the lich, right hand of the Lich King and ruler of the necropolis Naxxramas. What evil was it that led him down this path? Learn more about the events that darkened the fate of Kel'Thuzad, and ultimately of all Azeroth, in Road to Damnation, a short story preview of the upcoming content patch for World of Warcraft.

Tseric revealed today that there will not be a new reputation set to grind with the release of Naxxramas.  The Argent Dawn will continue to be the primary anti-scourge faction.

Argent Dawn reputation will be a consideration when the scourge comes a'knockin' in 1.11. We don't have plans to implement a new reputation group for 1.11.

Can I hear an hallelujah?

Not surprisingly, after the hotfix mentioned yesterday went live, guilds from all over the world are reporting Ouro kills.  Congratulations to all involved!

After retuning C'Thun to the point where guilds all over the world are suddenly reporting C'Thun kills, Tigole has announced a soon to be released hotfix for Ouru.

We're in the process of hotfixing Ouru. We're going to make 3 changes to address tuning issues with the encounter.

--Ouru's "uptime" will be increased before submerging.

--The scarab damage is being reduced.

--The cooldown between Sandblasts has been increased.

These changes should bring the encounter closer to the intended difficulty.

Which guild will be the first to take down Ouru?

There was lots of C'Thun related news today.  First came the news that a hotfix for the C'Thun encounter was made today:

We fixed a bug which was causing the Giant Eye Tentacles to still spawn during C'Thun's weakened state in the second phase of the encounter. It's not intended for anything to be spawning during his weakened state. Please note, however, that if there are already spawns up during the weakened state, they will not despawn. This fix merely prevents *new* tentacles from spawning during that state.

Also, the duration between alternating tentacle spawns has been slightly increased.

These changes should now be live, worldwide.

Not surprisingly, a few hours later came the news of C'Thun's death.  Congratulations to all involved.  The European servers got the hotfix first, so they got the jump on their North American counterparts.  I'm sure we'll be hearing of C'Thun's death on North American servers soon.

Late edit:  I now hear that all of the servers got the hotfix at the same time but that the hotfix came after the North American maintenance but before the European maintenance.  So, the European guilds still had their instances cleared all the way up to C'Thun, while the North American guilds had to do their full clears of AQ40 again.

Finally, a change will be made in patch 1.11 that will allow raids to recover from wipes deep inside of AQ40 much faster than they had before:

In Patch 1.11 we're going to add a quicker way for players who have defeated the Twin Emperors or Ouru to get back to where they were in the case of a wipe out.

More details to follow. Patch 1.11 is still a ways off. Internal testing has begun. The next step after that will be public testing on the PTR's.

A few notable news items in brief:

The mage talent review is essentially complete, plus or minus a few tweaks, but the 1.11 patch is still "a ways off."

Rogues will get their class review in 1.12.

More patterns will be released in 1.11 that will allow players to make nature resistance items in order to make progression through AQ40 easier.

In case you hadn't already heard, keyrings will be added in 1.11.  The number of keys that the keyring holds will depend on your level.

GamingSteve.com is claiming to have inside information on some of the changes to the battleground system coming in future patches (likely 1.12).  The most immediate change would be the introduction of the long needed cross-server battlegrounds:

Well good news is coming to all you Battlegrounds veterans out there ... and a lot sooner than you think! Blizzard is hard at work right now creating new enhanced Battlegrounds servers. These servers will no longer be regulated to a single realm, but cross-linked across Realms to create an diverse PvP experience! Right now they are planning on linking 16 realms together per Battleground server for massive PvP action. You could imagine how this can really help out the Battlegrounds situation, not only will the queues go much faster but you'll finally get a chance to fight across Realms.

Additional PvP improvements are also incoming, although much of it will probably be introduced in the expansion:

Imagine the features of Battle.net combined into the world of Battlegrounds: Worldwide rankings, tournaments, ladders, and more, only for the entire world of Battlegrounds. Yes, Battlegrounds will undergo its most radical change during the release of Burning Crusade expansion with Battlegrounds becoming a true worldwide tournament! Of course with The Burning Crusade slated for release at the end of this year, if not next year, this is still a long way off. But at least the interim patch should greatly increase the Battlegrounds experience.

With Blizzard finally getting around to linking the Realms up to each other does that mean that we might actually start to see more cross-realm game features? Who's to know, but Blizzard sure didn't buy 1500 new servers just for fun!

One should keep in mind that these are not official announcements, but this information does sound in line with other things I've heard.

Eyonix revealed an upcoming change to Zul'Gurub:

While it's not completely in-line with your dream parody, I do believe that you'll be happy to hear that in the next patch, the Dire Maul Librams will no longer be a requirement for the Zul'Gurub enchantments. Instead, a new item drop from either Bloodlord Mandokir or Jin'do the Hexxer, along with the class appropriate Voodoo doll will be all that is necessary, making these enchants much more accessible to players.

We do plan to incorporate additional use for the Librams, but the specifics are yet to be determined.

It was not revealed if this change would come in 1.10.2 or 1.11.

In addition, the 1.10.2 patch is now on the public test realms.  This is the first time that a small patch has ever been put on the test realms for review before going live.  I guess Blizzard felt embarrassed by the bugs that plagued the release of 1.10 (see the Noah's Ark screenshot above for an example), so the developers are being extra cautious with the release of this mini-patch.

There have been a lot of good discussions on the forums lately.  Here are some samples:

Sparked by the heated and informative discussion of the legendary caster staff that may be added in 1.11, Bolty asks Lurkers to come up with ideas for a legendary healing weapon.

Monkey points out a possible problem with having the Drenai being the fifth Alliance race in the expansion, because of the new revelation that the Drenai have a shamanistic heritage.  Others don't see a problem with that, however, and some even speculate both factions could have shaman and paladins working for them when the expansion comes out (and some think the idea is dubious).

Quark points out a post that explains the importance of including +weapon skill on one's equipment when facing raid level bosses.

Two threads, one discussing the reputation system and the other the upcoming Naxxramas raid dungeon, have brought up discussions of level capped content (or the lack thereof) for the solo and casual player.

Finally, Concillian reports that the Defenders of Darrowshire quest appears to be working again.  Let us know if you are able to complete this notoriously buggy quest successfully.

Some elite World of Warcraft raiding guilds have taken the unusual step of revealing details about a fight that they are working on.  In this case. the fight with C'Thun has everyone stumped, and the frustration is begining to mount.  Wild and crazy ideas involving the supposedly optional boss Ouro or the scepter that opens the gate to Ahn'Qiraj are being proposed.

As result of all these rumbling, the fights with Ouro and C'Thun have been hotfixed and nerfed heavily.  The squeeky wheel gets the grease.