I think this is a fun movie for anyone who enjoys the lore of Icecrown Citadel. There’s plenty of information here to get your fix for story and genre, while still focusing on the experience of raiding the Lich King’s homebase. Cybeloras has done a pretty good job with this project, and I’m excited to see what comes next. The first part only includes the bosses from the lower spire, and the second part will be out once the creator has enough footage.

Check it out yourself, and let us know what you think.

Season 8 arena gear now available for you to drool over! Even though season 8 hasn’t quite started yet due to delays, arena players will be rocking it in style. Although no clear date has been set in stone, the next arena season is expected to start soon (possibly coinciding with the 3.3.2 patch). The above shot is what the paladin gear looks like. Personally, I really like the way paladins, priests and warlocks look. I can’t say that there is a specific armor set that I absolutely despise, but do take a look at our gallery and see all the sets for yourself.

By now, those of you that have slowly progressed throughout the initial part of Icecrown have witnessed (or at least triggered) various traps. Some traps seem to show up after your group has cleared out a room or killed certain mobs or met some other condition like the ones before Lord Marrowgar.

But wait, there are more of them!

Dinaer at Forever a Noob demonstrates that there are more traps as you progress through the levels of Icecrown Citadel.

• Spirit alarm: Trip these to bring in the big skeletons. Great for reputation. There are four of these in the two chambers leading up to Lord Marrowgar.
• Mist trap: Not exactly a trap per se, but it can catch the unwitting raider off guard if they run into it. Either have a rogue disable it on the side, or activate the teleporter on the other side and beam in. You’ll run into it after you’ve downed the Deathbringer and zone in behind him.
• Geist trap: You’ll find these littered in the hallways of the Plagueworks. Have a tank behind the raid to intercept them as they appear.

I wonder what other traps we’ll see in the remaining parts of Icecrown. I can’t remember the last instance that had traps on the scale of Icecrown.

You’ve seen them in the streets of capital cities, diligently dashing between the bank and mailboxes. Or maybe you’ll occasionally catch a glance of them idling in front of the auctioneers. Who am I talking about? Bank alts!

While we toil and triumph in Northrend, these hardworking heroes of the home front care for the well-being of our estates, keeping our investments sound and our pockets full. In return, many players choose to provide them with a share of the profits, so that they can dress themselves (or undress themselves) in the most fashionable ways.

Now it’s time to pay tribute to them. If you have an amazing bank alt, send a screenshot of it to dawn@wow.com by January 27th at 11:59 p.m. EST and we’ll post the best results. We’ll also take the top five or so and let you all vote on them, handing out a Slashdance and Papa Hummel’s loot code to the top two winners.

Every so often, an email comes along the tip line that really gets the writers talking, and we received one such email last night from our reader Zikko, who was curious what people did while they were waiting for the Dungeon Finder to assign them a group (“Guess this only applies to DPS,” as he/she observed). While Zikko usually does dailies, watches TV, or farms mats for cooking and fishing, he/she wondered whether anyone had hit upon a better way to pass the time while the Dungeon Finder went on the search. I include the writers’ individual comments below, not just because it’s a nice “slice of life,” but I also think it’s a good peek at how different peoples’ experiences can be depending on the roles they play:

Matt Rossi: I have time to inhale a couple of times during the LFD queue.

Allison Robert: To amuse myself, I start counting, “One mississippi, two mississippi, three mississippi…” from releasing the mouse’s left button on the Join Group option and the queue popping. However, I am likely to discontinue the practice, as my brain is having increasing difficulty remembering what comes directly after three. It starts with an F. I know it does.

Alex Ziebart: When I’m queueing on my DPS, I tab out and play a different game for 15-20 minutes. On my healer, I brace myself so I don’t get whiplash zoning into a heroic so fast.

Eliah Hecht: I have about enough time to cross my fingers hoping it’s not Old Kingdom again.

Robin Torres: I tend to my farm in Country Life.

Fox Van Allen: The LFD daily is the first thing I do when logging on for the day, so I usually do the cooking and fishing daily. Since I’m a DPS and usually have obnoxiously long waits, I get bored enough to toggle between windows, looking at the armory and WoW.com. By the time I tab back to the Warcraft window, I’ve just missed the ready check and have three angry guildies cursing at me for throwing us back to the end of the queue to wait for another tank.

Chase Christian: Two words: dual monitors. I am waiting in two DPS queues at once! Ideally the heroic takes less time than the DPS queue, and one of my toons sits in Dalaran while the other vanquishes monsters.

Matt Low: I usually blink once or twice before my queue pops up. Dunno about you guys.

Amanda Miller: I have about enough time to ponder whether or not I might be able to sprint to the kitchen for some water and back after clicking to queue. On my DPS, believe it or not, I quest. Usually you can get a good 30-45 minutes in, if not more.

Eliah Hecht: Damn, 30-45 min? And I thought my BG was bad at 15-ish.

Fox Van Allen: Now imagine waiting those 30-45 minutes, having the LFD spinner land on Culling of Stratholme, and having your tank disappear into the ether without saying a word cause he/she doesn’t want to wait the five minutes for Arthas’s speech to end…

Dominic Hobbs: Had a bloody bear leave group from Oculus today. Nothing unusual there but this sod waited till we were half way round the first lot of trash, pulled 3 groups then split. Tanks are the new divas.

Amanda Miller: I find that people drop like flies when they see that they have landed in Oculus, despite the fact that it has been nerfed and there are new rewards for finishing it.

Allison Robert: Tanks were always divas, and I say this having played one for close to three years now.

Matt Rossi: What else would keep us doing it?

Rossi wins the thread. So what about you, our reading public — what do you do waiting for the Dungeon Finder to pop?

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 be your host today.

The above picture continues my obsession with Dr. Who, thanks to Liz. I’m not saying there’s a space time disturbance here, or that something bad is about to happen. But it might, because there is a blue police box outside of my apartment.

Johnthediver asked…

“Dance studios? Still coming? I am sick and tired of doing the “Hammer” or head banging.”

We haven’t heard anything about it, so I’d imagine Blizzard is keeping news of it very close to their chest. We’ll know if it’s coming out in the next expansion when Cataclysm’s features become more apparent.

Fallen asked…

“Was just wondering if there was an age limit on the applications for the columnist positions?”

You have to be legally employable in your place of residence. WoW.com right now has staff from their mid-20s through 40s. If your city/county/state/country/planet says you can be employed at 3 years old, then you can work here. If it says you have to be 16, then you can work here.

David asked…

“I really dont like Halls of Reflection, If possible i’d like to avoid it when using the LFG Tool. Could i wear like a set of blues so it wont queue me up for it?”

Nope, if you queue for a random dungeon and you have the gear for it, you have a chance to get put in it. There’s no way to say “Don’t put me in this dungeon.” But it would really be nice if there were such an option. I know some folks at Blizzard agree with me here, so maybe we’ll see something like that in the future.

Coupee asked…

“How fast are you traveling when you take a flight path? They sometimes go in very out of the way routes and was wondering if it would be faster to just take my flying mount?”

The rule of thumb is that they travel between 300% and 320% faster than running. Your epic mount travels at 280%, and special epic mounts travel at 310%.

As mentioned in the comments, the flight path mounts take lots of detours, so there’s lot of situations where flying directly to the location yourself is faster than jumping on a mount. I generally fly to places on my epic if I don’t need to do something else, otherwise I’ll hop on the gryphon and go AFK while flying.

Zach is a Battlegrounds junkie. Even when he’s hocking up asthma-generated globules of radioactive phlegm, he still manages to squeeze in a little slaughtering time.

Happy New Year, folks. I hope all of you had a good 2009 and are reading this without a lingering hangover or, like me, some form of bronchial complication stemming from the smog generated by all the festivities’ firecrackers. We’re kicking off 2010 with a quick look at the year that just passed, and boy, was it ever a good one.

More than any other year in the World of Warcraft, 2009 was a fantastic year for the Battlegrounds. Some very significant changes implemented that year renewed their relevance; furthermore, Battleground enthusiasts also received a verbal commitment from Blizzard developers that that aspect of the game would receive more focus and attention. The year began with the effects of Wrath spilling over from 2008, with the new and exciting Wintergrasp giving new life (and lag) to the world PvP experience. The first important change, however, was to come later with patch 3.1 in April 2009.

Queue anywhere, anytime

Patch 3.1 introduced the ability to queue from anywhere in the world, allowing players to devote more time to other endeavors such as questing or grinding in between matches. This effectively rendered Battlemasters obsolete, and many NPCs became mere decorations in major cities. Familiar NPCs such as the He-Man and Skeletor homages of Adam Eternum and Keldor the Lost disappeared in the following patch from their spots in Shattrath, and would only return briefly during their affiliated Battleground (Arathi Basin) holidays.

The changes in the Battleground system also removed the flavor text from talking to these NPCs, so players would no longer be treated to such gems as Adam’s proclamation, “I’ve come to Outland hoping to discover powerful artifacts to assist the League of Arathor against the Defilers in Arathi Basin… but all I’ve found is this smashing magical loincloth, a ridiculous gnome sidekick, and an egomaniacal undead stalker who insists I’ve stolen his grey skull, or some such.” It was a triumph for convenience (talking to the Battlemaster now immediately lists choices of Battlegrounds), but a sad day for flavor and humor.

That said, the change was great for the game. The ability to queue from anywhere allowed players to spend time away from major cities, giving players more flexibility with their playing time, removing one more barrier that used to prevent some players from entering the Battlegrounds. And just as the new system gave players more options to kill time between matches, the ease of getting in queue made the Battlegrounds a more appealing way to kill time between other Azerothian endeavors.

Rebalancing Wintergrasp

A minor patch after 3.1 impacted Wintergrasp, which was more successful than even Blizzard had anticipated, causing major lag issues throughout Northrend and sometimes even crashing the zone. The honor gains from Wintergrasp were too good, outweighing Battlegrounds honor gains. In addition, the game simply wasn’t capable of handling hundreds and hundreds of players running about and firing off spells in one concentrated area. This called for a nerf in Wintergrasp, first with the reduction in honor and more significantly the change in Wintergrasp daily quests into weekly ones, marking the first time repeatable quests reset on a weekly basis. This weekly PvP repeatable quest would later find its way to the PvE aspect of the game when weekly raid quests were introduced in Patch 3.3. 2009 was also the year where the cross-realm Battlegrounds queue system was adapted into the extremely popular Dungeon Finder.

Patch 3.2 further refined the Wintergrasp queue system to limit the number of participants in the zone. While this defeated the original intent of a non-instanced Battleground, it allowed Wintergrasp to function without disrupting the entire realm. Instead of a free-for-all, Wintergrasp became a strictly queued battle which enlisted players 15 minutes before each match, with a maximum of 120 players per side (three full raids) or 240 players total during a battle. The new system also favored max-level players over lower level ones, preventing honor leeching by low level participants in order to quickly acquire gear. The changes streamlined Wintegrasp play and ensured the stability of Northrend. As always, Blizzard would take what they learned from the experience and applied it to later developments such as the new Battleground in Patch 3.2. The nerf to Wintergrasp gave instanced Battlegrounds a healthy boost.

Battlegrounds experience

Perhaps the most revolutionary change in 2009 was experience gain in the Battlegrounds. Introduced in Patch 3.2 — arguably the most significant Battleground patch in all of the game’s history — the change made Battleground play competitive with other forms of leveling in the game such as questing or grinding mobs. For many years, playing the Battlegrounds while leveling up was counterproductive considering that honor gains were considerably lower and rewards prior to Alterac Valley paled in comparison to those obtained from dungeons (this was before the introduction of Resilience as the defining PvP stat).

Battlegrounds giving experience was a game-changer. Players could opt to toggle experience gains off by talking to the Experience Eliminators Behsten or Slahtz, but these twink characters would be placed in their own Battleground queues, making them face off against similarly twinked opponents. This gave twinks their much warranted equal opposition while making the Battlegrounds a more engaging experience for players just getting their PvP feet wet.

This opened up the Battlegrounds to many players who previously had unsavory initial experiences running into fully-geared and enchanted opponents. With two separate queues for twinks and genuine leveling players, this all at once made the Battlegrounds a level playing field for most players, a worthwhile activity even for those looking to level, and delivered to twinks the challenge they have always claimed to crave.

Isle of Conquest

Patch 3.2 also introduced a brand new Battleground, the first 40-man raid instance since old world Naxxramas, and the first large scale instanced Battleground since Alterac Valley. It also marked the first time Blizzard introduced a Battleground midway through an expansion, which could be a hint of things to come. Blizzard shipped Eye of the Storm along with the Burning Crusade, and never bothered with Battlegrounds play throughout the expansion, with most PvP efforts going into refining the Arena system. By shipping a Battleground with a major patch — a patch largely considered to be the most insubstantial in terms of PvE and raid content — Blizzard demonstrated a renewed commitment to Battlegrounds play and an earnest effort to make all aspects of the game truly worthwhile.

The Isle of Conquest included many elements introduced in Wrath and made popular by Wintergrasp such as destructible buildings, siege vehicles, bombs, and it even included a passable compromise for aerial combat — the drop ships. Blizzard also sidestepped potential imbalances by making the generals identical in health and ability, and making the map greatly retain some geographical symmetry. This allowed Isle of Conquest to avoid the pitfalls that plagued the first iterations of Blizzard’s first epic-scale PvP endeavor, Alterac Valley.

Cataclysmic impact

Although 2009 saw honor become more valuable as a currency, making it required to purchase various items sometimes in combination with Arena points or ratings, it highlighted the fact that Battleground players would only be able to receive second-tier PvP items and have no way to obtain PvP weapons outside of Arena play. The reasoning for this was varied and mostly valid — there’s just no way to determine the skill of a player through Battlegrounds PvP in the current system.

Enter BlizzCon, August 2009. Blizzard announced that rated Battlegrounds play would be introduced with the Cataclysm and that Battlegrounds players would have access to the same gear as Arena players within the same season. It’s a remarkable and ballsy change — a gracious nod to Battlegrounds enthusiasts placing them on relatively equal footing with Arena players. While Arena play will always be the logical and rightful format for true competitive and professional PvP, the shift towards making the game friendlier to players of all levels required Battleground rewards to be competitive.

Changes in the horizon hold much promise for the Battlegrounds and world PvP, as the island of Tol Barad would be a combination of Wintergrasp and the Isle of Quel’danas. A verbal commitment from the developers to give a lot more focus to the Battlegrounds is extremely promising considering that 2009 was a tremendous year for that aspect of the World of Warcraft. Expect to see a new Battleground, a new system to track success, and perhaps even one or more Battlegrounds rolled out throughout Cataclysm. Times are exciting, indeed. The cool thing is, as great as 2009 was for Battlegrounds and world PvP, I’m supremely confident that Blizzard will outdo itself in 2010 and ultimately, we the players benefit. Have a great 2010, everyone! And don’t forget to cause a little bit of mayhem this year.

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. Michael Sacco will be your host today.

That’s influenza A virus subtype H1N1 up there, but I’m pretty sure you thought it was just a really blurry map of Northrend at first glance. I’m not wrong. You thought it.

Mr. Shinra asked…

Why exactly are there places where we suddenly and magically cannot mount up (I mean *aside* from combat which is obvious), such as getting killed by the trash after Ionar in Halls of Lightning and having to run all the way back. You’ve seen how big and expansive those halls are, I don’t see a major reason why we cannot mount up to get back a bit quicker. At least in Culling of Stratholme we can ride from that house to the city proper– so its not a consistent rule entirely either.

I’m not suggesting there aren’t places where it makes a bit more sense; I can understand small areas such as the various vendors in Orgimmar and their tiny huts, where there just isn’t enough room, but a lot of the times, it seems like we have to dismount because… the game said so, and nothing else. For the majority of locations where it occurs, why do we have to dismount?

The rule in place for 99% of the game is that you cannot mount indoors. There are some exceptions to the rule, such as Ironforge, but that’s the basic idea.
Sicadastra asked…

Was anyone able to play a hunter in the Cataclysm demos at Blizzcon or anywhere else and experience the focus change? I haven’t seen write-ups anywhere so I assume now, but no harm in asking. If so, tell us about it…

The hunter focus changes weren’t yet implemented in recent playable Cataclysm demos. We’ll report about them in-depth once they’re implemented, be it in new demos or in the alpha/beta.

Butterbear asked…

When people say Thrall is in level 40 greens, what do they mean exactly?

Thrall’s model isn’t unique, and his armor has the same model as level 40 green gear available to all players. It’s embarrassing. At best, he’s wearing Stockade Pauldrons, which means he probably spent a lot of time farming Tyr’s Hand back in the day.

Airleagan asked…

With dwarf shamans presumably coming in the new expansion, would this mean that the Wildhammer dwarf clan is finally officially becoming a part of the Alliance and thus uniting with the current Bronzebeard clan of Ironforge? Or do you think that they will become a separate faction linked towards the Alliance like the Frostborn dwarves are currently?

I’ve no doubt that playable dwarf shaman will be Wildhammer dwarves, at least in canon, but it’s hard to say whether or not there’ll be a new Wildhammer faction. Old-school players will recall that there used to be ways to get Wildhammer rep, but that was removed a long time ago. We’ll just have to wait and see.

Healem asked…

Does the Cathedral of Darkness have any purpose in Icecrown?

Yep, it’s involved with the Tirion’s Gambit questline. A big event plays out there, but I won’t spoil it for those who haven’t done it. Those interested should complete the Argent Vanguard and Shadow Vault questlines in Icecrown, then head to the Skybreaker.

Mcdingo asked…

Someone told me that they are removing old world raids. Is this true? That would make sense with me for MC being that the zone is getting a remodel but I love my AQ. I’m sure there will be massive nerd rage if we loose the zone with the coolest mounts in the game, Im talking the battle tanks.

Blizzard hasn’t officially said anything about removing the old 40-man raids in Cataclysm, but it’d sure make me happy if they got rid of Molten Core forever. Forever.

Karen sent in this murloc-tastic screenshot with this description: I grabbed this while doing some tribal outreach/assassination work for D. E. H. T. A.. I call it “I come in peace! Pay no attention to the felguard behind the axe.” Keywords: Azeroth, felguard action shot, this costume makes me look fat.” Not that fat, Karen, just big-boned.

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@wow.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 screen shots without the UI showing — use alt-Z to remove it. Please, no more battleground scoreboards, Val’kyr on mounts, or pictures of the Ninja Turtles in Dalaran. Older screenshots can be found here.