In the Arena, long matches sometimes happen. The longest I've ever been involved with left me watching my Holy Paladin partner and a Resto Druid chase each other around the Blade's Edge bridge for a half hour. And I thought 30 minutes was pretty long-in-the-tooth for an Arena match. It turns out, that's nothing.

Richard tipped us off to a show-down that ran for 13 hours and 30 minutes. It seems like a long time, but when you check out the discussion thread -- it's revealed that the Warlock and the Druid weren't really fighting no-holds-barred for the entire time. The druid was skilled enough at his LOS and heals that Bandiago, the warlock, couldn't do enough damage to kill him. In return, the resto druid didn't have the DPS to burn down the Siphon-Life/Soul-Link warlock.

The two players started exchanging messages during the match. Bandiago would apparantly get up to go make brownies and post on the official forums. Whenever the druid would try and kill him, the warlock-chef would come back long enough to get in the fight. It eventually wound down, according to Bandiago, when he was able to get a Drain Life to keep channelling through a pillar. At 13.5 hours, Bandiago pulled off a win.

I guess we should offer congratulations, but I don't know. 13 hours is a long time. Many of us have had shorter love affairs. It seems like a long time to chase a bear around an Arena, to me.

Jazle of Barthilas finally gives level 8 mages the guide they need to down those very tough beach murlocs (they are fishmen) in Westfall. According to this rising young star in the Mage community (he's 7 in real life), you need to start at max range, lay in a frostshot and a few fireballs, and 1 more fireball for the killer blow! After that, since he's 4 years above you, you will be bound to get something good soon.

This is probably the clearest and easiest guide we've ever read, and as many players say, rare is the Mage who can actually drop a mob 4 levels higher (even at 8). We can't thank Jazle enough for this advice -- we agree he is "bound to get something good soon," and his optimism and earnestness, on the Mage forums, a place normally full of QQ and tears, is totally refreshing.

Oh, and he's right: don't use sheep. It makes their health come back.

Thanks, Dan!

Tanking has been getting a good, long look from the developers for Wrath of the Lich King. And about time, too – I'd say the number one issue right now in the group PvE game is a lack of tanks. Introducing another tank class is going to help, of course, especially when it's one as cool as the Death Knight, but that's not all that's being done.

Ghostcrawler, beta forum CM extraordinaire, has recently posted a big (well, big for a blue post) overview of some of the goals and decisions for tanking in the new expansion. It goes something like this:

• All four tanking classes should be viable.
• Tanking should be "a little more fun."
• Most characters in tanking classes (Warriors, Druids, Paladins, Death Knights) should be able to tank a normal five-man just fine, with heal specs (for Druids and Paladins) being the exception.
• Heroics and raids will require investment in tanking talents, but all tanking classes should be able to tank them if appropriately specced. Ghostcrawler notes that this is a change of strategy for Blizz; previously, for instance, feral druids were positioned by the devs as being better off-tanks than main tanks. Now, he says, "if nearly all guilds want the same class as their MT, we've failed."

Apparently the new policy on raid stealing is to report early and in detail. Blizzard poster Belfaire, in a thread entitled 'Raid Harassment' explains in response to a post about a couple of people using a gullible guildmate's trust to snag his raid ID by 'asking for help on quests' and then wiping them repeatedly on Illidan attempts. Seems that now, if this kind of thing happens to you, (I once zoned into MC to find that, instead of half done, it had been cleared up to Ragnaros by another guild that had just accepted one of our mages as a member... he brought our raid ID with him, so they decided to take advantage of not having to do the first three bosses.)

The change in policy may not make much of an actual difference in some situations... if someone's wiping your raid on boss attempts, the GM's probably won't be able to act before your raid is done for the night... but it's miles ahead of the 'there's nothing we can do' policy that's been enacted in the past. After all, it is possible for GM's to teleport jerks off of the Isle of Quel'Danas when they're making the badge vendor impossible to reach, so maybe they'll start porting griefers like the ones in Ironhide's post. I can only agree with poster Podric, and Belfaire himself, when they say that it's about time for this change.

Players have been asking for a way to track even their gray quests for a long time (in order to go back and do them for lore or reputation value), and now it looks like Blizzard is finally listening. Tigole says that in the next Wrath beta build, even gray quests will be trackable on the minimap, like normal quests are now. While a few players argued when the minimap first got updated that it would make the game way too easy, I've found (as I've been leveling my alt again lately) that it actually lets you focus on the important part of the game -- the quest text. Not poking around looking for those exclamation points keeps your mind on what's actually going on as you go back to a quest giver, and makes it more fun as you turn in the overdeveloped gizzard or whatever you're giving away.

So good news on this one for completists -- if you've been thinking about going back and hunting down all of the old quests, for reputation, for the new achievements, or just for the heck of it, you might as well wait until you can see them on the minimap.

We created a lot of waves with this post about Blizzard's Authenticator key allegedly failing -- as you know if you've been listening to the podcast, lots of people have emailed us with their own input on the situation, alternately thanking us for making it known that the Authenticator wasn't 100% secure, and lambasting us for being "ignorant" about how Blizzard's security token works. At the base of the story, there are two things we know are true: that someone was using the Authenticator on their account, and then was subsequently hacked. For that reason, we've stood by the "Authenticator fails" story -- while having an Authenticator on your account is a helpful line of defense, it, like all other computer security measures, isn't a 100% guarantee against getting hacked.

Most people agree on that. Where opinions differ are in how the account was hacked -- originally, we and a few other sources speculated that the Authenticator had been somehow removed from the account in question. But now Belfaire has responded (we believe to the incident in question, though a link to our story was removed from the original post), and says that as far as he can tell, the Authenticator was not removed from the account. In fact, after the password was changed back, the Authenticator's serial key was asked for and given, so the Authenticator remained attached to the account the whole time.

Of course, that just leaves the most important question: how did the account get hacked? We've heard all kinds of various insights as to how the Authenticator works (it only lasts for 60 seconds, supposedly each key can only be used once, so there's no way a keylogger could nab the Authenticator code and reuse it), but the fact remains that the person we're talking about was using the key, and still got hacked. One hack out of all the Authenticators sold so far is a terrific record, and could prove that, statistically, an Authenticator is good as 100% security. But the fact remains that this person got hacked while using the key (however it was done), and if security can be broken once, it will be broken again.

I'm noticing a disturbing trend in perusing the Wrath blue posts. Well, disturbing for me, and possibly for any other warriors out there. All that awesome we seemed to be getting? It doesn't seem that the warriors are finding it quite so awesome. A case in point is Titan's Grip. The Wrath forums seem to indicate that's it's not all wine and roses. There is a lot of math going back and forth in that thread, so I'll simplify it (probably too much, but that's what comments are for): At present, the white damage of Titan's Grip does not exceed that of dual wielding one hand or off hand weapons. This means that the damage increase of the talent must come from specials such as Bloodsurge hasted Slams, Whirlwinds and Bloodthirsts. However, since Titan's Grip slows the weapons down considerably (fully talented, Titan's Grip means you swing 20% slower, so a 3.5 speed weapon can be over four seconds between swings) any miss streak can be crippling for rage generation. No rage generation means no rage to use those specials, so that you're dependent on white damage that's actually inferior to what it would be without the talent. It seems a little counter-intuitive that so evocative and exciting (on paper, anyway) a talent would actually lead to a DPS decrease.

I find myself wondering if the issue is not with the talent itself, however, but with the itemization of all 2h weapons in the 60 - 70 game.

Reader Alex was kind enough to send along this forum post he wrote, and he hits on some interesting questions about achievements and how they might affect bullying and posturing on the forums. Right now, people can spout off pretty much any opinion they want without repercussions, but when achievements are added into the Armory, people won't be so anonymous -- we'll all be able to know, within a few clicks, what bosses you've downed and what you've really done in BGs and Arenas. Sure, people will still spout off whatever they feel like saying, but as Alex says, there'll be a little less anonymity.

I'm not sure how much of a change it will really bring -- when it was first announced that talents would immediately be viewable by other players, a few worried that it would cause more problems (people would be discriminated against because of their talent choices), but I haven't seen that happen in game -- just like always, if someone says they're a Feral Druid, you just assume they can tank as a bear, without checking out their talents closely.

And my guess is that it'll be the same with achievements -- people will still say whatever they want, and while there may be the occasional player called out for not getting the Onyxia achievement after he's claimed to have "been a raider from the beginning," there's always the old argument of "this is my alt!" At least, that is, until Blizzard shows us a way to see whose alt is whose...

Mookou asks for a "51-point talent preview" before the expansion, and while we probably won't actually get that, what we'll get is likely the same we got with the Burning Crusade release -- about a month before the expansion, there'll be a huge downloadable content patch for everyone (we've heard before that it will be patch 3.0) that will contain all of the updates everyone is getting: all of the talent updates, game mechanic changes, model updates, and so on that we're going to see in the expansion. Blizzard will make all the changes and fixes around that patch, and then when Wrath is actually released, you'll just be installing Northrend content, and the game itself will be (supposedly) ready for all of it to work together. And Neth confirms that this is probably the plan -- it should work much like last time around, though the patch will probably be closer to release day.

Now, Blizzard is much better at this than they used to be, so we'd imagine that (hopefully) things will go a little smoother this time around, and we won't have nearly as many problems or hotfixes as we saw last expansion. But then again, we do know they are planning things a little differently this time around -- they've divided the entry and exit zones up, so we won't see a big mess like we saw in Burning Steppes or Hellfire Peninsula. And there are rumors that we'll see a World Event go down before we actually go to Northrend, and as of right now, we don't know if there is going to be a testing phase for that or how long it might take. Last time around, too, you'll note, everyone got a free respec (and some even got two), and we haven't heard anything about that this time yet.

Of course, as always with Blizzard, time will tell. Given that we're expecting a November release, that would put a big 3.0 patch in October, and we already know Brewfest is going to have some changes then, so 3.0 could come in conjunction with those changes or around them. We'll have to wait and see.

So while some of us who've chosen wrinkled, old mugs might not get a rejuvenating facelift (and Undead who don't have jaws will continue to miss them), a lot of customization will be available in the form of new horns for tauren, jewelry, and maybe tattoos. Salthem states the same thing in another thread, saying that there's a lot of development to be done, but that this was the direction they were taking.

The April Fool's prank that Blizzard pulled this year featured the Guitar Hero-inspired Bard class, and pictures of the character had intricate tattoos on both arms. Some early speculation posited that it could be from the new profession Inscription. It could be that the tattoos were just an artist's embellishment for the prank, but it's equally probable that the barber shops in Northrend just might be tattoo parlors, as well.

You can now get your beta discussion going on with Blizzard via the Wrath of the Lich King Beta Forums, which have been made open to the public. This means you do not have to be in the beta to view the forums, but you do have to have to be in the beta to post in them.

This is great news for those of us who want to keep track of all things Wrath, with comments and discussion happening right from Blizzard. They'll surely be a treasure trove of knowledge during the upcoming testing phase.

It's turning out to be quite an exciting beta night. Stay tuned for more.

While surfing the forums this morning, I came across a little gem of a thread protesting against Blizzard for the following:

1. Breaking "our" addons and mods.
2. Incorporating features from popular addons into the default User Interface, and thus breaking addons and mods. There's also a sentiment that Blizzard is "stealing" these ideas rather than being innovators.
   
3. Fixing "their" bugs which in turn breaks "our" addons and mods. The suggestion is that they don't care, or could take steps to prevent this.
   

As you can imagine, all sorts of responses cropped up, including the usual people who get into arguments with other posters, players in agreement, joking and sarcastic responses, and of course, an awesome string of blue responses.

Nethaera was in an answering mood this weekend -- she opened up a few cans on all kinds of player questions, and clarified a few answers we weren't so thrilled with before. The biggest question, of course, was the release date for Wrath, and rather than just giving the usual "soon" answer, Neth actually made sure to say that Blizzard has definitely not finished the game yet.

She also gave a much better answer about why Blizzard is opposed to the leaking of talent data from the game. Before, all we heard was that leaking the data was "extremely offensive and inappropriate" (that comment's been deleted from the forums, actually). And this time around, Neth is much more reasonable -- the reason they don't want data leaked is because they want players to theorycraft from gameplay, not from talent data. Of course, that still doesn't mean hearing about the data earlier is a bad thing, for the players or devs, but she has a point -- reading talent data isn't the same as playing the class.

Other than that, the questions aren't too great. People ask if Blizzard is going to do anything original, and of course they are -- Blizzard's great ideas don't come out any sooner than "when they're ready," but when they do, they're almost always groundbreaking and fun. It's completely understandable that Wrath is taking their focus, and while yes, the waiting is always the hardest part, Blizzard has never shown us that the wait for their games is anything less than worth it.

I was wondering when/if things would get a little hot and heavy for the new CM Zarhym on the forums, and this thread is it -- players start out asking for a date for the expansion (we all know when Wrath will come out already: "when it's done"), and when Zarhym orders up a generic answer, players start to test his limits. One snarky answer gets him to deal out a ban, and it's downhill from there -- when players start fighting with him over the fact that they want a new battleground, he gets a little snippy, and eventually, he says that putting in a new battleground would only satisfy a "small percentage" of the playerbase. And then players really get angry.

I think Zarhym handled himself pretty well -- his little snipe at players for thinking an expansion was "too soon" last year was uncalled for, especially since Blizzard told us they were actually aiming for one every year. But he's not distraught to the point of a Tseric yet, obviously. He's just not quite as smooth as, say, Drysc or Neth yet in quelling angry players.

It's too bad that, since the CMs are anonymous, we have no idea when they start of their qualifications or past experience (though of course we'd trust Blizzard to hire people who know what they're doing). But Zarhym got his official welcome to the forums -- when players start flaming you for saying the wrong thing, you know you've made it.