Arena Season 5 to end as soon as April 14

Filed under: News items, PvP, Arena

Bornakk posted a tentative date for the announced end of Arena Season 5, indicating that the season can end “as early as April 14″ or a week after. It should be noted that the first four Arena seasons had no breaks in between, with one season beginning immediately after the [...]

Shifting Perspectives: A 3.1 miscellany

Filed under: Druid, Analysis / Opinion, (Druid) Shifting Perspectives

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author ferrets around her inbox for several unanswered questions concerning patch 3.1.
Greetings, Druids. For a while now I’ve been adding to a list of questions I’ve had for [...]

25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear

Filed under: Items, Analysis / Opinion, Raiding

10-man
ilvl
25-man

Naxx
200

KT, EoE
213
Naxx

Ulduar
219

Ulduar hard
226
Ulduar, KT/EoE

232
Ulduar weapons

239
Ulduar hard

Once upon a time, the only raiding in WoW was 40-man raiding, and we did it uphill, both ways, and flasks went away when you died. And we liked it. Later on in Classic WoW, some 20-man raids were introduced in the [...]

Addon Spotlight: AuctionLite

Filed under: AddOns, Features, AddOn Spotlight, Making money

Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we’ll cover it here.
Slightly continuing in the vein of “alternatives to,” today’s Addon Spotlight looks [...]

15 Minutes of Fame: Your friendly neighborhood Blacksmith

Filed under: Blacksmithing, Features, Interviews, 15 Minutes of Fame

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes - from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you’d like to hear more about.
In today’s World of Warcraft, [...]

Sinister Calling buffed in 3.1

Filed under: Rogue, Patches
A bug where Glyph of Backstab interacted with Dirty Deeds to cause the glyph to benefit attacks other than Backstab was, apparently, recently fixed. However, there was concern that this bug fix would hurt Subtlety DPS too hard, so the Sub talent Sinister Calling is being buffed to compensate - full Sinister [...]

That woman is a man, man

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Humor, Lore
Chromie, the little champion of the Bronze Dragonflight, is quite possibly one of the most polarizing figures in World of Warcraft. You love her or you hate her. She’s either adorably awesome, or irritatingly stupid. I, for one, hate her because I had to do her quests in Andorhal [...]

The Daily Quest: The Warlock’s Den

Filed under: Warlock, Fan stuff, Forums, The Daily Quest

We here at WoW Insider are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.
Today I’m spotlighting a wonderful Warlock forum, The Warlock’s Den. Here is but a small sample of the excellent guides available on the site:

Analyzing WWS [...]

PTR schedule updated

Filed under: Patches, Raiding, Bosses
As you all probably noticed, there was no patch 3.1 today. Evidently they’re not doing testing Ulduar yet - three more hard mode tests are scheduled for tonight and tomorrow night.
On the North American PTR:

Hodir (hard mode): tonight, 7 PM EDT
Iron Council (hard mode): tomorrow night, April 1, 7 PM EDT. [...]

Urgent authentication database maintenance underway

Filed under: Realm Status, News items
The opening announcement on the login screen has just let us know that there is urgent maintenance being performed on the authentication servers. The maintenance will continue until 1:00 p.m. PDT / 4:00 p.m. EDT.
During this time you may be able to log into the game, or you may [...]