Since we’re now bearing down on the holidays with the fury and majesty of an 18 Wheeler, now comes a time to discuss how those special days affect your WoW play. On the one hand, a lot of people have extended time off this time of year, giving them more time to play, while others find their time taken up with family and friends celebrating and thus have less time to play. I live roughly 2000 miles away from anyone I’d celebrate with, but my wife and I live close to my mother in law, meaning that we’ll spend the holidays close to home and save for the specific days themselves will have the same or more time to play, but much of my raiding guild will be traveling and as a result raiding will most likely be suspended from mid December on. This wasn’t as much of an issue for us last year due to Wrath of the Lich King launching in November… the holiday season was taken up by folks leveling… but this year it looks like five mans will be our major WoW excursions until the new year. So what about you? Will you be raiding as usual, taking some time off,

15 Minutes of Fame is WoW.com’s 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. When there’s a dozen of Them for every one of You, life on a PvP server gets ugly. PvE progression crawls when your faction’s population is so minuscule that you can’t seem to assemble a PUG even during peak hours. You can’t craft your way into better gear, because an anemic economy means no materials on the Auction House and no players in Trade waiting to craft with them. Log in on a night when the few of raiding guilds don’t happen to be active, and you could find yourself looking at something like 40 other faction-mates online. Welcome to the Alliance of US-Cho’gall. Current player activity levels average an abysmal 1 Alliance hour for every 12.7 Horde hours played — something like a 1:7.5 player ratio, down from 1:15 earlier this year. An incredible community effort and guild named The

More Cataclysm footage is trickling onto the internet from IgroMir 2009, Russia’s huge gaming convention, and there was a beautifully clear (well, compared to what we usually see) video of early Goblin gameplay that merited some attention here. I have to confess; I wasn’t initially enthusiastic about Blizzard’s choice for a new Horde race, even if Goblins do make sense from a lore perspective. But after trawling through so many videos of their early questing experience in the Lost Isles, I’m sold. Female Goblins still aren’t playable yet, but their male counterparts have some awesome casting animations and an incredibly endearing sort of waddly run. They just look so interesting and dynamic doing anything that now I’m torn over which class to roll, although I can’t really take their 2H special attack seriously, so it’ll probably be a caster-class of some sort. I enjoyed Necrolord_Bob’s answer to our poll on which Goblin class to roll: “Priest! Priest of the Holy Temple of BOOM!” We didn’t think that Blizzard

Wowhead has been a go-to site to track what’s going on on the PTR for quite some time, and now there’s even more reason to go there. Their improved new items in patch 3.3 page features the following improvements: Categorization by item level, with breakdowns for the five levels of items that are coming at us (219, 232, 251, 264, and 277). You can now filter the new items and search within them. Items are also sortable. And this isn’t a new feature, but it bears mentioning, at least if you’re a major news geek like me: you can get an RSS feed of the new items added to the Wowhead database. If you wanted to you could probably hook this up to Twitter, or put it on your blog, or whatever. Anyway, if you want to know what items are coming at us along with Icecrown Citadel, I think there’s no better place to be. What items are you most excited about?

Arrrrghhhh. Okay, folks. Let’s rebuff and give this another shot. And this time if I see anything — anything — in the general area of Onyxia before I say go, I will unleash a storm of hell upon you. That goes double for you, Curious George McWarlock. I hope you have the money to pay for everyone’s repair bills after that little stunt with the Eye of Kilrogg. Who knew that Onyxia was so paranoid about being watched by the Legion? (Thanks to Nazgűl of <TheHiWay> on Runetotem for the screenshot.) Do you have any unusual, beautiful or interesting World of Warcraft images that are just collecting dust in your screenshots folder? We’d love to see them on Around Azeroth! Sharing your screenshot is as simple as e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com with a copy of your shot and a brief explanation of the scene. You could be featured here next! Remember to include your player name, server and/or guild if you want it mentioned. Please include the word “Azeroth” in your post so it does not get swept into the spam bin. We strongly prefer full

Rawr is a great third-party app (it’s open source, and doesn’t interface with the game at all) that’s designed to help you figure out everything you need to know about your character, including how to best buff, enchant, and gem up your gear and set up your stats for whatever you’d like to do. It started out as an app strictly for tanking druids, but recently, it’s grown to include pretty much all classes and stats. Our good friends at sister site Download Squad just recently found out about it, and they’ve got a nice basic writeup posted that serves as a good overview if you’ve never used the app before. They also mention that the app just got another update, to version 2.2.25, and all of the release notes are posted over on their site. They’re also looking for help — if you’re a C# developer, or know one who can work on their rogue and hunter models, be sure to let them know. Since the program is open source, anybody who knows the code can jump in and add their own features, or fine-tune the class choices, which then

Aside from the usual laughs and story developments, this week’s hot topic seems to be the new virtual pets for real money feature from the Blizzard store. There is also some amazing artwork this week, so read on! Battlemasters: Pulling Rank. This marks the end of the Prologue. Dark Legacy Comics: YARRRRR! Daily Quests: It’s Better Not To Ask. World of Warcraft, eh?: A Little Birdie Told Me. I absolutely adore the artwork in this one! I always enjoy the artwork, but this one is amazing! NPC: Introducing… – I love the first frame in particular. Keyboard Chloe – I like her ideas. Kitty Tips. Teh Gladiators: This is… The Barrens? NoObz: Fourth Commandment. Beyond the Tree: Acquired Taste. The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Tiny Fists Of Panda Fury. All I can say is – awesome. LFG #301 and #302. GU Comics: Oh, Is THAT All? Dungeons and Draenei: Public Test Realm 3.3. Experience Points: Followers. The Scout Report #87.

Want to be cool, yo? Want to bask in some blue goo? Want to put yourself in a sticky situation having to heal Ghostcrawler (perhaps, if he shows up)? Then come and pug with the blues today at 7:00 p.m. EST / 6:00 p.m. CST / 4:00 p.m. PST on the PTR. Blizzard folk will be logging onto the PTR to test out the new dungeon system matching tool that’s coming up in patch 3.3. Blizzard has done this kind of event before on beta realms and tournament test realms, and they’re always a good time. WoW.com writers will be there taking some pictures of any antics that develop (we know the blues have a thing for turning people into toads and what not). Nothing says loving like 10,000 people standing around /yelling “Don’t nerf me, bro!” That’s hot.

Happy Halloween, dear readers! Today’s the day, the spookiest day of the year! In the real world, prepare yourself to sit through hours and hours of random children in costumes ringing your doorbell begging for treats from strangers. In Azeroth, you only have two days left to finish your various Hallow’s End achievements, everything disappears into the aether on November 2nd it ends tonight! Whoa! Halloween is being celebrated in worlds beyond Azeroth and our own, too. All month long, our sister site Massively has been covering the numerous celebrations going on in the various ongoing MMOs, from Free Realms‘ Spooky Spectacular to Aion’s Harvest Revel. If you’re interested in any of those, head on over to Massively’s Halloween roundup to check out their coverage, as well as a screenshot gallery of some holiday eye candy from those many games. Some of the events were quite cool, so I highly recommend taking a look. Guild Wars still has some pretty fantastic aesthetics. As long as you’re all here, I’m curious: Are you dressing up