Good Tuesday Morning, everyone. We're now around 2 weeks into the new expansion, and I'm sure by now everyone has some reason to give thanks for something in this thing. Despite the long queues and the iffy server issues that plague some, I'd say it's overall been pretty sweet.

Downtime today is around 6 hours, from 5 AM to 11 AM Pacific time. If that cuts into your normal playtime, or if you're stuck at school or work, I'm going to suggest my usual: Why not catch up on WoW news? There's a lot of it right now, of course, what with the new expansion. Let's look back at this past week in WoW:

Hot News

• Hopefully, you had a chance to log into WoW on Sunday or Monday. If you did, you know by now the joy of the blizzard bears.
• The Bear was given out in honor of WoW's 4th anniversary. We celebrated by remembering.
  
• The Queue, our new replacement-slash-continuation of the old favorite Ask a Beta Tester, is in full swing. Check out what's been answered so far, and ask your own questions.
• BlizzCast 6 is out! It's mostly focused on Diablo and Starcraft, but there's a few things a WoW Player might be interested in.
• Hierloom Items, the new Bind to Account goodies, seem to be on everyone's mind lately. We have a guide to grabbing them for yourself or for your latest new project.
  

Class News and Guides

• Feral Druids are getting some pretty drastic armor and weapon changes in 3.0.4.
• Speaking of Feral Druids, Blizzard is implementing some AE changes that will give Swipe to cats, as well as improving Shamans and Rogues.
  
• Hunters, check out our guide to some of the new gear in the Northrend newbie zones.
• Death Knights, we have a similar newbie gear-finding guide for you as well.
  
• Warlocks, look forward to a rather large change to Ritual of Summoning coming soon to a PTR near you.
• Healing Priests, get some advice on what consumables to bring to a raid.
• Warriors, you'll probably want to level to 80 as Protection. Yeah, you heard me.
• Mages, check out our guide to Wrath reputation rewards for Mages.
• Priests will like our guide to polishing off levels 75 to 80.
  

More Tips and Guides

• Confused as to how to get reputation and faction in Wrath? We have a guide. We'll also help you make sense of the Oracles and the Frenzyheart, speaking of reputation gain.
  
• Do you know the way to Dalaran? We do, and we'll help you get there too.
• Insider Traders' push through Inscription continues, this time with 305 through 450 skill.
  
• If you use a bar mod, and haven't updated it since Wrath came out, you may be missing out on some pretty neat stuff.
• Ever wondered what happened to some of your old Azerothian NPC friends? Apparently, a lot of them went to Northrend.
• Here's a pretty straightforward reminder to everyone as they level up: Check your skill caps.
  

Odds and Ends

• WoW's added even more celebrity commercials to its stable as Wrath begins. This time, it's Ozzy and Steve.
  
• Ever wondered how much computing power it takes to run WoW? It might even be more than you think.
• Just in case you're wondering if Wrath was it, Mike Morhaime has confirmed that they'd at least like to continue with the expansions.
• Mister WoW goes to Washington as a member of President-elect Obama's team is uncloseted as a player.
• Even the Lich King knows that it is a piece of cake to bake a pretty cake.
  

Tags: downtime, featured, maintenance, roundup, server-downtime, server-maintenance, servers, tuesday, tuesday-morning, tuesday-morning-post, tweet-this

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, News items, Wrath of the Lich King