When the first set of 3.1 patch notes popped up, many Death Knights were surprised to see that their auras were being reworked into something that, well, just isn’t an aura at all. Instead, the effects are being rolled into talents so that, if talented, the Death Knight herself still gains the benefit, but does not extend it to party or raid members. Although they will now be called, for example, Improved Blood Presence, the benefits will be applied regardless of the presence assumed by the character. I have to admit that my first reaction to the change was a negative one. It feels weird to me switching from a Holy Paladin to a character that simply does not have a comparable range of buffs and auras to offer. That’s when my roomie and addict of WoW forums and websites, piped in with the why. Today, Ghostcrawler gives an official explanation. Unholy Aura, which grants a 15% movement speed increase, was slowly “becoming mandatory as a raid buff.” The ability is not only handy for long corpse runs, as well as fights where movement speed and reaction time are

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider’s daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. We’re going to jump right in today, because we have plenty to talk about this time around! NarwhalFrenzy asked… “Referring to the quest Out of Body Experience, we already know what happened to Prince Keleseth and Prince Valanar, but will we ever figure out what happened to the other darkfallen there, like Prince Theraldis or Prince Atherann?” I have no doubt we’ll be seeing them in Patch 3.3, in and around Icecrown. Prince Theraldis (the one on a horse (with an equine-themed pashmina afghan)) seems to have been the overseer of that whole project going on during Out of Body Experience, so I wouldn’t be surprised if he turns out to be a raid boss and Prince Atherann is in a 5-man or a group quest elsewhere. Though it would be interesting if they were a side-by-side raid boss, like the Twin Emperors. Hm! Erik asked… “I am currently leveling my first

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider’s daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today. Today, in addition to all of the questions I’m answering for you, I need all of you to answer a question for me. Hawaiian Pizza: Delicious, or Crazy Delicious? This is an important question, my friends. I need each and every one of you to contribute. It’s for the good of mankind. Also, to prove my girlfriend wrong. It rules, does it not? Hawaiian Pizza Delicious Crazy DeliciousVote Evaline asked… Are there any Ulduar achievements currently on the PTR? I’m guessing they aren’t there yet, because we would have heard something about them if there were. Another question if I may, do the bosses on the PTR currently drop loot? Again probably not, for the same reason as above, but can’t hurt to ask. No achievements, no loot. We probably won’t see anything about the achievements at all until they’ve tested all of the bosses they plan on testing at least

Been a while since we did a shield. And since we did a BoE, actually. So here’s both in one. Name: Northern Barrier (Wowhead, Thottbot, WoWWiki) Type: Epic Shield Armor: 7890 Armor (221 Block) Attributes: +42 Strength, +94 Stamina Increases defense rating by 63, which is just awesome. Gallery: Phat Loot Phriday And increases hit and expertise rating by 28 each. Which doesn’t just make this a great tank shield, it makes this a terrific threat-generating shield. It doesn’t have any extra block rating on it (though the block there by itself is terrific), so won’t help as much with damage mitigation as some other shields might. But when you absolutely positively need to keep aggro, accept no motherf#$*ing substitutes. How to Get It: It appears in the Cache of Winter after Hodir is defeated in Heroic (25-man) mode. But wait — it’s Bind on Equip, which means that even if your guild isn’t making their way through Heroic Ulduar, you can still pick it up, given that a) no one in the raid actually wants it, and b) you’ve got enough

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider’s daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.Ah, maintenance day. The day where I finally get to go out into the world and suck some sunshine into my pallid flesh. I may even pick up some groceries! One wow goldcan only order crates of Ramen off of the internet so many times before life starts to get a little bland. …Wait, but if I leave the house… who will write The Queue!? Oh man, forget it, I’ll get some sunlight next year. Maybe I can order some Pringles to add a little flavor to my noodles. Fargostar5000 asked…   Don’t know if anyone has asked this yet, but are groups going able to run Ulduar-1o successfully using only the gear from tbe other 10-mans thus far, or will heroic level raid gear be necessary/recommended? Having gear from the 25-man raids is absolutely not required to do 10-man Ulduar. It’ll make it easier, of course, but it’s not at all required or necessary. The 10-man raids are on

Patch 3.1 may be here sooner than we expect. As of this evening, people exiting WoW should see their background downloader start up in order to deliver patch 3.1 — or at least parts of it. As to whether this means we should expect the whole shebang to go live on Tuesday, I still wouldn’t bet on it. Not only have there been indications that the devs are willing to delay Noblegarden if they have to to keep testing the patch, It seems like class balancing work still has a bit to go. With this in mind, it seems most likely that what we’re getting now is mostly finalized art and zone files that won’t change before the patch goes live. But whether we have one more week or one more month, the preparations are underway. We’re one step closer to the Argent Tournament and Ulduar! [Thanks to everyone who gave us a heads up on this!]

A new report on MMO gold farming claims that there are about 400,000 working in China on gold farming and trading, and that there could be as many as 500,000 to even a full million. Of course there’s no way to tell exactly how many people are wow goldemployed in the business (and the number almost certainly doesn’t stay constant for long), but according to interviews and surveys done of business there, that’s the number they’ve come up with. They also claim a $10 billion a year turnover, however, and that number seems way high, though remember that they’re talking about all MMOs, not just World of Warcraft. The report has some other interesting information about how China does gold farming: there are a number of brokerages staffed by English speakers in the larger cities that handle the actual transaction, and then the farms themselves are usually outside the cities, where cheaper labor is available. Typical pay in the farms is about $140 a month plus food and board, working in about ten hour shifts, while pay is higher in the city-based brokerages.

The Argent Tournament has been overshadowed quite a bit by Ulduar in patch 3.1, it hasn’t been talked about a whole lot since the first thrill of finding out it was actually there in Icecrown. Since that rush a whole lot of things have changed with the Tournament, but beyond the dedicated few, I have my doubts it was receiving as much testing as it needed. That’s probably why Kisirani has put out a call for focused testing on the Argent Tournament, asking for as much feedback as you can supply. Kisirani’s thread on the official forums lays out a few things: First, a lot has changed since the early PTR. This means that if you only did the quests in the first week or two of the Tournament, you should try wow goldthem again before submitting feedback. If you’ve never been to the Tournament before, Jean Pierre Poulain awaits you on Krasus’ Landing in Dalaran. He’ll send you out there for free. If you want to do it yourself, the Tournament is just north of Sindragosa’s Fall. Gallery: Patch 3.1: The Argent Tournament What kind of feedback are

I know it’s a silly RPer thing, but I try to pay some attention to how my characters look in game. For example, I still haven’t gotten the Shave and a Haircut achievement on my Death Knight because I think he looks pretty cool and very much like he should as a character and I’m having a hard time changing it, even for an achievement. Another thing I do as a result of this is do varied and esoteric quests to get gear that MIGHT look good on me conceivably. Some day. Possibly. My Hunter wow goldhas a full set of black leather armor in case she ever has to, I don’t know, join an RP night stealth strike force, I suppose, and a torch in case she needs to lead an angry mob or something. It’s a little obsession. Still, there’s a few vanity items I’m still trying to track down. For example, I’m still trying to find a pair of solid blue jeans. Rancher’s Trousers come first, but they’re shorts and whatnot. Of course, what I really want, I am pretty sure doesn’t exist: An item that will turn my Death Knight’s Ghoul

Just in case you needed any more Twitter in your life (I’m getting to the point where I really don’t), enter the PlayXpert Twitter widget, part of the PlayXpert gaming toolset, a free Windows application that you can download to run alongside your PC games (very similar to Xfire and that type of application). It’s a little bloaty if all you want to do is run Twitter alongside WoW, but unfortunately, that functionality will never be available in an addon, as addons can’t interact with any other outside sites. The poor man’s solution here is to just run WoW in windowed mode and have your Twitter browser or client open right next to it — you don’t need a big application if you really need to be connected at all times. But if you want to livetweet your raid without sacrificing screen space to windowed mode, PlayXpert is one way to do it. It’ll even do some autotwittering for you if you want. And of course if you’re on Twitter already, don’t forget to follow our WoW Insider Twitter account. We’ve already hit our goal of