The second half of June has been pretty hopping in the World of Warcraft. Not only is Arena Season 4 finally going live today, but patch 2.4.3 is on the PTRs, and the Midsummer Fire Festival is on the live servers. On top of that, we're scant days away from Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational, and we have a mysterious splash screen that may herald a rather large announcement.

The downtime for today's Maintenance is going to be pretty extensive as well, from 3am PDT to 11am PDT, which means you'll need some reading material while you wait for those servers to come back. Once again, I am here for you, with a round-up of all the best news from the past week here on WoW Insider, organized by category.

Let's start with finding out what's going on with patch 2.4.3:

• You can read the patch notes right here.
• Find out how 2.4.3 can help that bag space problem - wealthy socialite style!
• Feeling like you need a new hat? Try beating up an old man and his dog.
• If you can't log on to the PTRs, get the next best thing with our 2.4.3 eyecandy gallery.
• Yes, Virgina, there are premades on the PTRs this time around (Although only on the US servers, at least for the moment).
• The new TCG Loot is available for testing on the PTR, and we've got video of our own testing run.
• Ponies at level 30? You heard right.
• So you've read about the Cheat Death nerf, but aren't sure what it means? Let us enlighten you.

Season 4 starts today, as mentioned, and we already have quite a few articles that will help you get the most of out of the season, as well as more coming out in the next few days:

• Yes, the Season 1 gear set will be gone from honor in favor of the Season 2 set.
• Don't PvP? Season 4 may turn out to be rather lucrative for you anyway.
• Will the new gear ratings crack down on point selling? Zach doesn't think so.
• Find out how Blizzard's deciding who gets the Season 3 rewards.
• Michael Gray suggests a 31/27/3 build for taking your warrior into Season 4.

If you haven't had a chance to look into the midsummer festivities yet, we have a whole slough of guides for you to peruse:

• We have a guide that will get you on the right path to questing at the Festival.
• Once you have enough Burning Blossoms, check out how you can spend them.
• You can check out Lord Ahune's loot table, then find out how to defeat him and get a tabard.
• Leveling your lowbie during the Midsummer Fire Festival? Find out why you might want to.

If you're sick of hearing about Season 4 and the Midsummer Fire Festival, here's some more articles for your approval:

• Feeling bummed about uneven battleground matches? Zarhym shares your pain.
• Is Blizzard feeling the heat from the upcoming Warhammer Online game? Some fans think so, but the CEO of EA is a bit more mellow.
• So when do you kick a piece of deadweight from your group anyway?
• Remember the Spore Creature Creator? The Murloc was just the beginning.
• Ever wonder what would happen if NBA Arenas were more like WoW Arenas?
• Did you miss the MLG's 3v3 Arena Tournament in San Diego? No sweat, there's videos.
• WoTLK's best new feature? The facepalm emote.
• Speaking of WoTLK, everyone's favorite Alpha leak wiki is back with a new design.

That's all for now, but be sure to keep it here at WoW Insider for the rest of the day and the coming weeks for even more news. We're hard at work on a guide for the new Season 4 gear. Also, we're sending people out to the Worldwide Invitational in Paris, France, so we'll have all the news that's sure to come from the developer panels and the playable WoTLK sessions.

Tags: 2.4.3, downtime, maintenance, midsummer-fire-festival, patch-2.4.3, scheduled-downtime, scheduled-maintenance, season-4, server-maintenance, tuesday, tuesday-morning, tuesday-morning-post, tweet-this

Filed under: Realm News, Realm Status, News items