Two Bosses Enter … but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com’s series of fantasy death matches. This season’s bosses come from the five-man instances of Wrath of the Lich King. Loken. You knew he was going to win, even before you saw who he was going up against – he’s just built that kind of a rep. As with all Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves matches, however, it’s how they get there that makes it interesting. Apologies that I wasn’t able to wrap up this battle for you last week while I was on vacation. Rest assured that I’d never leave our hungry spectators hanging! This week, let’s look back at some of the lore-based points readers brought out about Loken versus Ley-Guardian Eregos. Rai: Even if by some miracle Loken managed to win, due to Eregos’ being faster, able to shift and most likely being more intelligent, he’d still die. Something so powerful that doesn’t require five Drakes and coordination to take down the Ley-Guardian is bound to attract the attention of Malygos … Tridus: “Something so

So a while back, I asked you what races and organizations you’d want to see show up in the next expansion. But while races and organizations bring a lot of flavor and purpose to an expansion, there’s nothing like a good charismatic figure to really stir things up. Be it Garrosh or Varian, Bolvar or Brann Bronzebeard, the figures of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion have certainly done a lot to inform the story and drive discussion and debate in lore. With that in mind, I’ve been thinking of who I’d like to see take a starring role in a future expansion. Turalyon and Alleria are definitely the biggest stars I can think of who have yet to make an appearance. I’d love to see them come back through a portal from whatever world they’re on, with all the drama that would bring. Does Turalyon still hold a grudge against the orcs for the death of Lothar? What will Alleria think of the Blood Elves and of what her sisters have been up to? Of course, there’s the minor characters too. Grand Admiral Jes-Tereth is probably one of my favorite storyless

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we talk about the upcoming Emblem of Triumph gear, analyzing each piece’s stats and bonuses. Due to the tireless work of Boubouille of MMO-Champion and many others, we’ve been able to discover many of the new items coming our way in patch 3.2. There’s a wide variety of gear planned for Rogues, as there are three separate ilvl tiers of gear being distributed. In addition, Blizzard has included two copies of nearly every piece of gear: one for the Alliance, and one for the Horde; each piece possesses its own art and design. We’ll be able to pick up our new Emblems of Triumph from the Daily Dungeon quests and the new Crusader’s Coliseum. You can trade the EoTs for a few very attractive pieces of gear, especially for those few slots that you could never find the gear to fill. When planning your gear migration path in patch 3.2, remember to include these items in your spreadsheets.

Totem Talk is where Shaman enthusiast (imagine Robert De Niro from The Untouchables saying that word) Matthew Rossi comes to discuss all things Shaman. This week, we feature another horde shaman sent in by a reader named Steve. Steve, I lost your email if you want to claim your screenshot in the comments or via another email. I apologize for my brain being cracked. I spent the last week doing three things in game. One was getting my Death Knight up to 80 and getting him defense capped for tanking, but I’m sure none of you care about that. The second thing was running Ulduar 25 on my warrior and Ulduar 10 on my shaman. My shaman eschewed his usual “DPS as Enhancement or heal as Restoration” mindset this week due to the lack of our usual Elemental Shaman, who is quite frankly a far, far better caster Shaman than I am or will ever be. But babies wanted their Elemental Oath so I bit the bullet and respecced. (Admittedly, in a 10 man run with 1 rogue, 1 feral druid tank, one paladin tank, two priest healers, and three warlocks and a mage, my Elemental Oath was

You’ve probably heard that the Chinese guild Stars has pulled off the world-first Alone in the Darkness, killing Yogg-Saron with no watchers helping. You may have seen the video they posted of their winning strategy. But here’s something even more interesting, for me: a Q&A with the guild about their strategy and their experience with the fight. It was originally in Chinese, but a poster on the MMO-Champion forums did a translation. It’s a really interesting read. For one thing, Affliction Warlocks turned out to be the most valuable class, since DPS have to turn away periodically in phase 3 to avoid Lunatic Gaze and a heavy DoT-based class doesn’t lose as much doing this. The hardest part of the fight, according to Stars, was dealing with the adds and Shadow Beacon in phase 3. Shadow Beacon is randomly used on between three and five adds, and these adds need to be separated from each other and taken away from Yoggy (or else bad things happen). Basically, the way Stars do it, it’s a matter of Hunters using Distracting Shot on the Beaconed adds, and

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. Adam Holisky will be your host today. People responded quite well to the Patches of Yesteryear column that I started up yesterday, so I thought for today’s Queue I’d use one of the screenshots of the old UI that I dug up on the internet. A few old readers (yes, you’re old farts) noted that the UI featured above likely came from an internal alpha build or something way before the beta 4* when WoW went into “public” beta mode. So the above screenshot and yesterday’s screenshot are quite old. Possibly as old as 2001 when WoW was first announced. And for next week’s Patches of Yesteryear column we’ll either look at how the models have changed or examine a couple dozen talents that have gone through some pretty amazing metamorphosis. But enough about that old column, time for Queue! Siaperas asked… “WoWHead’s PTR site lists a heroic achievement titled: “I’ve Had

Each week Arcane Brilliance celebrates Independence Day in its own special way. Most people celebrate the 4th of July by setting off explosive devices of varying sizes. In similar fashion, Arcane Brilliance also enjoys blowing things up. The difference is that whereas most people tend to set off pretty fireworks, Arcane Brilliance prefers to cause Warlocks to explode. The result isn’t nearly as pretty, but to Arcane Brilliance, it has its own very unique charm. I don’t know if you’re trying out the patch 3.2 PTR or not, but if you are, you should go out and mess with Living Bomb. Like, right now. Go cast it on some things. That’s right, I said things with an “s” on the end. As in plural. As in more than one thing. Watch those things burn to death simultaneously. Rejoice. Yes, Blizzard’s present to Mages on this day when the United States celebrates its Declaration of Independence from foreign rule is apparently the ability to blow up multiple targets with Living Bomb. On the PTR, you can now have Living Bomb up on as many targets as you

It’s July 1st, which means you can head out to Nagrand and pick up your free gems the nearest mailbox and pick up this month’s brew, assuming you have a Brew of the Month membership! This month we have the Stranglethorn Brew, which is certainly more interesting than the various “teehee you farted/burped/barfed/burped again” brews. Upon drinking the Stranglethorn Brew, you get a buff called Jungle Madness! Exclamation point included. It causes your character to hallucinate for awhile, and be attacked by spectral Jungle Gnomes. If you don’t have a Brew of the Month membership, you can watch a video from Wowhead poster VBub that shows the brew in action at the end of this post. Just click the ‘read more’ link at the bottom. Assuming they don’t change the brews for next year, our beertastic journey will be coming to an end pretty soon. There’s only one brew left that we haven’t seen, which is the Draenic Pale Ale. After that, we’re back to the Binary Brew unless they decide to put out a whole new batch of 12 brews,