We are pleased to announce that we will be sponsoring the upcoming WoW Factor event on US-Lightbringer, which has one of the biggest Alliance populations. The WoW Factor is a transmogrification contest run by Keelhaul from Disenchanting Azeroth, and Ironyca/Noelani who run WoW Roleplay Gear. Overall, the contests have awarded more than 1,000,000 Gold in prizes and have received support from Blizzard's community team. Here is more information on the Lightbringer contest:

• Server: US-Lightbringer
• Faction: Alliance
• Date: 23 March 2012
• Time: 8:30 PM EST
• Location: Will be announced in trade before the event
• Prizes: 120,000 Gold & 2 Blizzard Store mounts
  • Round 1: 1,000 Gold to each of the 20 best outfits (20k in total);
  • Round 2: 10,000 Gold to each of the top 10 out of the Round 1 finalists (100k in total);
  • Round 3: The top two sets at the event will receive a Blizzard store mount of their choice.
• Sponsors: Mounts: Icy Veins, Gold: Keelhaul
• Judges: Keelhaul, Ironyca, and Noelani
• Livestream: TwitchTV
• Further Details: WoW Forum

Winners will choose their mount from among the following:

If there is anything more you would like to know about the event, feel free to ask on the WoW Forums. Alternatively, you can contact the organisers on Twitter: @DEazeroth and @WoWRoleplayGear.

If you would like more insight into the judging criterias, we recommend that you check out the livestream recording of a past event, US-Arthas Alliance, for example. The event itself can be viewed between 50 minutes — 2 hours 40 minutes on the recording.

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The second week of Dragon Soul is about to start. Many guilds have already cleared the entire instance and will start Heroic modes soon. To help them in this challenge, we have compiled the list of changes from Normal mode to Heroic mode for the first 4 bosses: Morchok, Zon'ozz, Yor'sahj, and Hagara. We also give possible strategies to tackle these changes in the encounters.

Our guides for Morchok, Yor'sahj, Zon'ozz, and Hagara have been updated to cover the strategy for the Heroic mode. Therefore, the sections of this article that pertain to these bosses should no longer be considered relevant.

• Morchok Guide
• Yor'sahj Guide
• Zon'ozz Guide
• Hagara Guide

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The first week of the new Darkmoon Faire on the PTR is almost over and the only conclusion we can reach is that it really did not live up to any of our expectations. When Blizzard first announced that this event would be revamped, they went out of their way to tell us how magnificent it would be:

The truth is that while this event rewards many cool items (replica of old armors, mounts, pets, item level 378 gear, etc.), it mainly consists of a very boring grind centered around 5 mini-games.

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The epic gem designs that will come with Patch 4.3 have recently been made available on the PTR. Alchemy Transmutations have also been added to the game files.

The six epic raw gems are the following:

• Red: Queen's Garnet;
• Blue: Deepholm Iolite;
• Yellow: Lightstone;
• Orange: Lava Coral;
• Purple: Shadow Spinel;
• Green: Elven Peridot.

These raw gems are planned to be dropped in the Dragon Soul raid, presumably by bosses in both Normal and Heroic mode.

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Blizzard have finally made the Well of Eternity 5-man heroic dungeon available for testing on the PTR. Chronologically, this is not the final of the 5-man dungeons (that position belongs to The Hour of Twilight, which we have previously reviewed), but for technical reasons, it has been made available last.

We have managed to complete the dungeon not long ago, and we would like to present you with our initial impressions. Before doing so, however, we will provide you with a quick overview of the instance as well as with screenshots that we think are interesting.

The dungeon currently drops item level 378 loot (the same level as Firelands normal loot) of epic quality. On the PTR, the first 2 bosses each dropped one piece of loot, while the final boss dropped two, as well as a Chaos Orb (following the same pattern of loot drops from Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub).

Note that this article is not intended to be a dungeon guide, despite the fact that we may make references to some of the boss strategies. In the same way that we did for Patch 4.1, we will release detailed and comprehensive guides for all the new heroic dungeons, well before Patch 4.3 is live.

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Our readership growing, we have decided to start holding a regular giveaway contest where our readers will be given a chance to win a collector pet or mount.

Each week, we will give away two such collector items, one for our Facebook followers and one for our Twitter followers.

This week, we will be offering a Pandaren Monk (Facebook) and a Lil' XT (Twitter)

Pandaren Monk (Pet)	Lil' XT (Pet)

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We have recently completed several runs of the latest addition to the Patch 4.3 PTR: The Hour of Twilight, one of the 3 new 5-man heroic dungeons.

In this article, we will present you with several screenshots of the dungeon, to give you an idea of the look and feel that it has. In addition to this, we will give you a brief overview of the instance itself and the bosses it houses. Finally, we will offer some personal impressions.

The dungeon currently drops item level 378 loot (the same level as Firelands normal loot) of epic quality. On the PTR, the first 2 bosses each dropped one piece of loot, while the final boss dropped two, as well as a Chaos Orb (following the same pattern of loot drops from Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub).

Keep in mind that this article is not a dungeon guide (even though we do give overviews of the bosses and their strategies). As for Patch 4.1, we will release detailed and comprehensive guides of all the new heroic dungeons, well before the patch is live. This article is simply meant to offer you a first look!

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The Public Test Realms are now live in both the US and European regions. Several new features, to be introduced with Patch 4.3, have been made available for testing.

We have recently completed the first of the three 5-man dungeons, End Time. Below, we will give you a preview and brief summary of the dungeon, including a few screenshots, which we think you will find interesting.

The dungeon currently drops item level 378 loot (the same level as Firelands normal loot) of epic quality. On the PTR, the first 4 bosses each dropped one piece of loot, while the final boss dropped two, as well as a Chaos Orb (following the same pattern of loot drops from Zul'Aman and Zul'Gurub).

Keep in mind that this article is not a dungeon guide (even though we do give overviews of the bosses and their strategies). As for Patch 4.1, we will release detailed and comprehensive guides of all the new heroic dungeons, well before the patch is live. This article is simply meant to offer you a first look!

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In this article, we detail and analyse the Tier 13 Set bonuses that have been announced yesterday. For each class, we first recall the various specialisation bonuses. Then, we give our opinions on these bonuses before backing up these opinions with detailed explanations.

Tanking classes have received similar, interesting set bonuses, which might force tanks to have a deeper involvement in the strategy their raid group is using on encounters.

Regarding healing classes, Holy Paladins and Discipline Priests have received the best bonuses. For Restoration Shamans and Druids, the set bonuses are decent but nothing extraordinary. The set bonuses for Holy Priests have very questionable usefulness.

As usually, DPS classes have received set bonuses ranging from excellent to disappointing:

• Excellent: Hunters, especially the Marksmanship specialisation, Shadow Priests, Demonology Warlocks (probably the specialisation of choice with Patch 4.3), and Arms Warriors;
• Good: Unholy Death Knights, Mages and Rogues;
• Average: Druids, Elemental Shamans, non-Demonology Warlocks, and Fury Warriors;
• Disappointing: Frost Death Knights, Retribution Paladins, and Enhancement Shamans.

Keep in mind that all these set bonuses will probably change before Patch 4.3 is released. Also, class changes are expected in Patch 4.3 and we need to see what synergy they will have with the set bonuses. In particular, melee DPS classes are expected to receive a large damage buff. Also, some set bonuses that might appear quite useless may end up being useful on some fights in Dragon Soul (the Deathwing raid), whose mechanics have not been revealed yet.

We first detail all the tanking class bonuses because they are very similar and have all led us to the same conclusions. Healing and DPS bonuses will be detailed in further sections, class by class.

In each section, we shortly present both set bonuses, listing which specialisations they benefit the most, before giving longer and more detailed explanations.

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Six interviews with Tom Chilton (Game Director) by Joystiq and Eurogamer, J. Allen Brack (Lead Producer) by The Escapist, and Greg Street (Lead Systems Designer) by MMO-Champion, Tankspot, and Ten Ton Hammer have been released. They detail upcoming changes to be brought by Patch 4.3, which has been subtitled Dragon Soul (the name of the new raid). The interview with J. Allen Brack was mistakenly released last week before being promptly hidden. It has now been released again.

In this article, we round up and decrypt all the pieces of information that have been scattered in the various interviews:

• 3 new 5-man dungeons: Endtime, Well of Eternity, and Hour of Twilight;
• new raid: The Dragon Soul;
• the Raid Finder tool;
• a pair of Legendary Daggers for Rogues, and maybe some Legendary pieces of armour;
• Tier 13 set pieces only drop from raid bosses and cannot be bought with Valor Points;
• epic gems;
• announced class changes;
• Northrend leveling time decreased;
• screenshots.

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Earlier, Greg Street (also known as Ghostcrawler), the lead systems designer on World of Warcraft, explained the underlying process used for deciding what game design changes need to be applied, how, and when.

This is a long, technical, but very instructive article. If you are interested in reading it, we are going to try give you a proper summary so that you know what to expect. We also use the latest hotfixes to illustrate some points made in the article.

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Blizzcon, the annual conference held by Blizzard, will take place on the 21st and the 22nd of October in Anaheim, California. We have done quite a bit of research to figure out how to follow it online and see what it consists of exactly. We thought it would be interesting to share everything here.

While all the tickets for the actual event have been sold out, two possibilities remain for either following it on the internet or attending it. You can buy tickets for the online streams or enter a giveaway contest and win entry tickets to Blizzcon.

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Void Storage is a new feature to be added in Patch 4.3. It gives players additional storage room for their soulbound gear items (mostly). This is being done in anticipation of the sudden rise in interest for old items, which the introduction of Transmogrification will, no doubt, cause.

Two weeks have passed since this new feature was officially announced and previewed, and we feel that it is time to take a look back at everything that has been said about Void Storage by Blizzard's staff, either in the official preview or in forums posts.

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Transmogrification is a new feature to be added in Patch 4.3. It enables players to replace the artwork on their weapons and armors with that of other items, which they have acquired.

Two weeks have passed since this new feature was officially announced and previewed, and we feel that it is time to take a look back at everything that has been said about Transmogrification by Blizzard's staff, either in the official preview or in forums posts.

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Today, we present you with a small, yet useful, application, which you can use to check which quests you still have to complete in a particular area. Typically, this will interest anyone currently trying to obtain the Loremaster title. For the moment, we will be calling this tool the Completed Quests Checker.

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It looks like major changes are on the horizon for all the tanking classes, starting with Blood Death Knights.

In the latest edition of the "Dev Watercooler" (found here), Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street, the lead systems designer for World of Warcraft, has brought up a number of very interesting design ideas, intended to provide more challenge and diversity to the tanking role, which has become quite stale as of late.

Some of the changes are going to be implemented in Patch 4.3, while others, it is hinted, will be part of the changes coming with the next World of Warcraft expansion.

We're going to take a look at all of them, both those which are confirmed as well as those which are, at this point, mere speculation.

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Patch 4.2.2 has now been released on both the North American and the European servers. There are 3 changes that, we think, will be of interest to our readers. Others are very minor.

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As we prepare for the release of several tanking class guides, we have realised that, in order for these to be properly understood and put into practice, there needs to first be a general tanking guide.

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Earlier today, a batch of hotfixes for Patch 4.2 was released. They fix a few issues for Feral Druids, Balance Druids, and Fire Mages, while also improving the T12 4-piece bonus for Restoration Druids and Holy Paladins. Allow us to take a deeper look at these changes.

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Last Thursday, Blizzard announced that the Darkmoon Faire would be entirely redesigned for Patch 4.3. Since then, we have been on the lookout to see if anything else would leak from the official forums. Today, we deliver you an in-depth analysis of what we have learnt so far.

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