Todays extended maintenance brings us Patch 2.4.3. This one has caused some controversy ever since hitting the PTR, with cheap, lower level mount, a Cheat Death nerf, and the ability to use Arena Points to buy epic gems, among other things. Personally, as I'm now running alts through the high 20's, low 30's recently, I'd forgotten just how annoying most of those zones are. There is some help with a couple new quest hubs and flight points, but for the most part, it's a LOT of back and forth running that just isn't fun. 

Oh, and... Happy 9th Birthday, Lurker Lounge! 

Manaprincess starts us off today, offering interesting handcrafted WoW related knicknacks.\

Bornakk pipes up to help either quelch or fan the fires of flying mounts in Northrend. He says that there will be some process involved, but that it won't be an expensive one. I'm pretty interested in seeing what kind of questline Blizz can cook up to allow our flyable mounts freedom of the air again. This is of course just speculation, but there is also an instance around lvl 77 that is supposed to require a flying mount to get around in. Perhaps you have to quest in there to get the ability to fly again? A great many possiblities here.

Zach Yonzan opens up a can of worms with an article wondering about Season 4 in arena. He says that a 2000 rated team is nothing now, and is quite a large proponent of the new ranking system to "weed out the chafe". This leads to several interesting questions. One of the larger ones is "If folks can't get at least some wins, will they keep playing?" Arena PvP is getting to be like raiding was, pre-TBC. Anyone in Naxx gear (Season 3/4) will blow someone in MC gear (Season 1) out of the water. Sure, fun for the S3/4 level folks, not so much fun for the S1 (or less) level folks. If new blood stops coming in to the arena...what's going to happen to it? Will it truely sift down into a contest of skill, or will it just wither and die?

As ever, the Ask A Lore Nerd column provides some great insight into the story behind the game. 

The Casuals, the "forgotten majority" when it comes to WoW...what do they have to look forward to in WotLK? Robin Torres answers that for you. 

In a fun nod to the announcement of DIII, there will be a Tyrael mini/non combat "pet" added to WoW.

Finally...you have signed up for the WotLK Beta Test, right? It's now open, and you can head over and sign up for your chance to be a beta tester.

No, it's not World War I, but the World Wide Invitational. A huge party by Blizzard, and a news extravaganza, with Diablo III announced and a ton of WotLK information to dig through. The easiers way to do this is to head over to WoW Insider's WWI Roundup. There is a lot of very good writeups from folks who were able to attend the festivities, and what they saw there.

Nyhm is back, and this time, he's giving Eminem a run for his money.

Patch 2.4.3 is live on the Test Realms today. It's got several very interesting changes in it. Chief among them:

-Mounts at 30?! Yes, it's true: Apprentice Riding and mounts are now available at level 30. Training costs 35 gold.

-When a stun wears off, the creature that was stunned will prefer the last target with the highest threat, versus the current target.

-The Eredar Twins will now award the same items regardless of which order they are killed in.

-The new stopwatch feature can be accessed via the /stopwatch, /sw, or /timer slash commands. Inputting a time into the slash command will make the stopwatch count down. For example, /stopwatch 1:0:0 will make the stopwatch count down from an hour, /stopwatch 1:30 will make it count down from 1 minute, 30 seconds, and /stopwatch 30 will make it count down from 30 seconds.

Head on over to Pesmerga's Thread to check out the discussion on it. 

First and foremost, going back a bit, MEAT lets us know that the Diablo II Ladders are resetting. For a game that is nearly 10 years old, that's some pretty impressive news. But not everyone is happy about it. Indeed, even with reason. Head on over to MEAT's post to discuss it.

WoW's minimap has undergone a lot of changes in the years it's been used.  Personally, I'm of the mind that the current version is quite handy, and I like it. I'm finding quests that I had missed before, and it's cleared some room off the hotbars with all the different types of tracking available at the map itself. But is it too much? Or not enough? Does it spoon feed too much to players, or are there still things that you have to find out by being an Explorer type? 

Eyonix welcomes a new Community Manager to the forums, Zarhym. Well...he's got a really cool avatar, which is likely some NPC Death Knight.

As the expansion approaches, we were all prepared for Illidan. But, are you ready for Level 80? 

One topic of interesting debate is the inability to transfer from a PvE server to a PvP one. That..may be changing. 

That's right, Eyonix has stated that Arena Season 4 will be starting on June 24, 2008. This season brings about some interesting changes, including among them a personal and team rating reset. 

A fun site to play with, this simulates the random loot aspect of Kil'Jaeden and Illidan. I decided to see what a years worth of farming (You can refresh the page to simulate a week/lock) would get me. I ended up with 5 MH Warglaives, 4 Thori'dal's, and 0 OH Warglaives. I also noted that (as a hunter, it interests me) Illidan's bow dropped about once every other month, and (as it looks cool, and tanks would want it) Illidan's shield dropped twice only. Back to back weeks, as well. I did, finally, get an OH Warglaive, 3 weeks into the "new year".

We open up with some good news from the Lurkers Alliance on Stormrage. They put Kael'Thas down last night.

Do manners matter in a game? Is sportsmanship expected? Who determines the baseline for 'fair' in a game? Good questions, indeed. 

Koraa posts (in a rather humorous manner) some pretty big WotLK news for Shaman. Their totems will be switching to Physical, making them, in the very least, castable while silenced. 

swirly starts up a nice Pally Spreadsheet that he's working on, looking at the various values of gear. The thread itself goes in several good directions, and is filled with excellent advice and numbers for the pallies out there. 

The Blizz Podcast went live on it's raids and dungeons version this time. There is some  very good news in there, and some interesting news as well. Blizz apparently quite likes the Badge of Justice system, and is looking to expand on it for WotLK. I must admit, having been too often on the wrong side of the RNG, I like this change.

Cameron Sorden strikes again, this time musing about how to Retain Customers. This is something every MMO struggles with, and at this point, it's an interesting topic, There are several shiny new MMO's out there, and anything "new" in WoW is likely a couple of months off (most folks suspect last quarter of '08 for WotLK). 

Amanda Dean takes a look at Arena Rating, and how it effects you and your team...and what can be done about it. 

Matt Low takes a look at the PvP'ing Priest, and offers some suggestions and tips on how to better acclimate yourself that environment. If PvP's not your thing, Eliah Hecht has a nice article on gearing up your PvE Priest to tackle Karazhan and beyond. 

One of the features I'm fast becoming fond of over at WoWInsider is the "Ask a Lore Nerd" questions. There are some really great questions in this installment, and if you are a bit of a lore geek like me, these series of articles are a great read.

Something I've been wondering about lately is a good question that is asked: Is It Too Much? It refers to hybrids, and the synergy they bring, though also wanders along synergy in general. Right now, there are some very hard and fast synergistic groups, and some folks that can't even really compete without some level of synergy (Hello WF to melee...). This can make life as an RL really hard, especially when making up a raid. There are a lot of ramifications of either reducing or increasing synergy to consider, as it's already a weighty subject.

A Tale For Guild Leaders, is a fictional work by Cathode. It's a good story, and brings about some good followup posts as well. 

Oh, and Happy June! Don't forget to head over to Nagrand and have a chat with Gezhe so you can get your green gems for the month...