The Midsummer Fire Festival has begun

The Midsummer Fire Festival should now be live on almost all North American realms. If it isn’t, it will be shortly! Not much has changed since last year, beyond the addition of the achievements.
Speaking of achievements, while we have our guide to the Achievements of Midsummer, you might not be able to make a significant [...]

Scattered Shots: So you want to be a hunter – Levels 71-80

Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, the weekly World of Warcraft Hunter class column. This week we wrap up our “So you want to be a hunter” leveling series as we look at Levels 71-80 and see what makes up the best class in the game. So join me, Eddie Carrington, Brigwyn from The Hunting [...]

Two Bosses Enter: Gal’darah vs. Loken

Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. This season’s combatants come from the original five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King.
This week’s match in the Two Bosses Thunderdome makes the healer in me cringe: Gal’darah (Gundrak) versus Loken (Halls of Lightning). Gal’darah steps into the [...]

Brief launcher update

Blizzard updated the launcher again today without warning and hopefully without incident — unlike Monday, when everything went awry, errors abounded and people were unable to connect.
There is no indication that patch 3.3 is anywhere near downloading or anything other than a small tools patch. There has also been no word from Blizzard yet [...]

The Queue: No

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com’s daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.
For the curious, the original title of today’s edition of The Queue was “The Queue: Adam if you skip me and write a Queue today I’m going to [...]

Patch 3.3: Lord Marrowgar and Chill of the Throne impressions

The next wave of Icecrown Citadel testing began today. A new patch 3.3 build was uploaded just hours before testing was scheduled to begin. Tonight, we’d take on Lord Marrowgar and Festergut. Raid loot had been implemented so we were anxious to see what some of the drops would be like.
Not only that, today marked [...]

Lichborne: The care and feeding of pets

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the world of the death knight from WoW.com’s resident undead slave, Daniel Whitcomb.
While we’re not strictly a pet class, per se, no-one can deny that we probably have the largest menagerie outside of Hunters and Warlocks, depending on how we’re specced. It could stand to be a bit [...]

WoW Moviewatch: The Story

It probably makes me sound like the biggest fanboy ever to say so, but I think that Cranius may be my favorite musical performer right now. Something appeals to me about the emotion and earnestness he brings to his music, and the interesting arrangements he creates in each song. His work is unique and compelling, [...]

Totem Talk: Leveling on the 68-80 express

Totem Talk, the column for shamans, finishes up its roundup/overview/update (it’s all these things and more!) of shaman leveling with a look at what you’ll be doing once you get off the boat to Northrend. Matthew Rossi is tired now, but would like to thank Steve again for the screenshot accompanying today’s article.
And so we [...]

Around Azeroth: Mother and child reunion

At his drake’s request, Amathyst of <The Stormwind Reserve> on Barthilas rode up to visit Alexstrasza and introduce her to one of her many children. Unfortunately for Amathyst’s mount, it turns out he inherited most of his characteristics from his much less impressive father. This reminds me of a pit bull/basset hound mix I once [...]