Danny Whit is usually the one sitting here writing this thing up for your maintenance day entertainment, but he's out of the office today. Where is he? I wish I knew. Last time I saw him he put on a pair of shades, gave me a thumbs up, then jumped out of our office window and landed on a sweet hog three stories down. He yelled something in Greek, then rode off into the sunset. So... here I am. The craziest part of it all? The window was closed. He didn't even have the decency to open it and now there's a draft. Thanks a lot, Danny.

Servers are down, and will remain down for a number of hours as patch 3.1.3 rolls out and many servers receive significant hardware upgrades. As long as you're here, you might as well make the most of it. In case you've missed it, here's the best of WoW.com from the past 7(ish) days.

Hot News and Features

• Blizzard revealed a few big details regarding the upcoming Patch 3.2, entitled Call of the Crusade.
• Speaking of Patch 3.2, it's going to bring us one of the most anticipated updates to the game in the last year or two. New Druid forms! Okay, okay, so only some people were looking forward to those, but still. Totally anticipated. First they revealed the Tauren bear forms, and then the Night Elf bear forms. New cat models still TBA.
• WoW Europe now has the option to merge their World of Warcraft accounts with a Battle.net account!
• Speaking of our European friends, some of them are now experiencing cross-language battlegroups.

• While not WoW specific news, Windows 7 is on the horizon. Our own Adam Holisky took it for a test drive with WoW and let us know how it went.
• Only a select few guilds have managed to down Algalon the Observer, and only on 10-man so far. His Heroic version has yet to die. If you're interested in a look at the boss, the Underground Kosmonavts have a video of their world-second kill on the crazy constellation.
• I'm still chugging away on Turpen, who hit level 15 last week. Keep an eye on the site today for an update! The little guy is 25 now!
• WoWInterface just launched the beta of their new addon manager, MMOUI Minion. Eliah Hecht jumped on it in a flash and has a very quick review for you.
  

Class News and Guides

• Hunters, our new Scattered Shots columnist is in the process of writing his first entry for us. Prepare yourselves. It's coming very, very soon. You may have heard of him.
  
• Shifting Perspectives addressed some issues for Restoration Druids this past week, and does a little speculation on where the class may end up in the future.
• Arcane Brilliance proves that Christian Belt is a big baby. No, seriously. Oh, and I guess he addresses some Mage issues as well, but that first part is the more important one.
• Hey, Priests. Healing Mimiron sucks. You might want to read the latest Spiritual Guidance.
• Encrypted Text is dagger-deep in Ulduar, and has plenty of tips for you raiders. That's part two of a series, by the way. You didn't miss part one, did you?
• Hey, Shaman. It's 7:30 AM Eastern. Do you know where your loot is?
• There's a little roleplayer in all of us. Yes, even you cold-hearted Warlocks. Nick and Hakth'vug sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G.
• So it turns out the Warrior's rage generation formula isn't the formula we thought it was. Funky.
• Warrior and Paladin tanks, watch out. There could be some big, big changes coming to Block soon. Will they be good? Most certainly. Will they be scary and confusing? Yeah, probably. If you're one of those crappy people that don't like change. No, no, I'm kidding, I love you weirdos too.

Items, Dungeons, PvP, Professions, and More

• Our raiding column, Ready Check, has expanded to twice-a-week. Michael Gray joins Jennie Lees in writing this sweet thang. Gray's first contribution is an in-depth look at cooldowns in a raiding environment and how to use them!
• I didn't like how long that bullet point was going to be, so I made a new one. Jennie's edition of Ready Check this week makes a bold statement: I'm more hardcore than you. Wait, what does that even mean?
• Do you collect recipes for whatever crazy profession you've picked up this week? Not sure where to find the recipes you need in Northrend? Insider Trader has you covered.
• It's okay to be a noob. Really. It is. Embrace the noobitude. Well, not forever. It's okay for now, though!
• The Colosseum's interview this week is quite possibly one of the best its seen yet. Go read what Ogc the Warlock has to say about their arena experience.
  

Odds and Ends

• Michael Sacco has been having some fun with our Twitter account. Can you tell a story in ten words or less?
• Raynor is overpowered as hell. S'all I'm sayin'.
• WoW's Black Jelly is made out of jellyfish. China's Black Jelly is made out of grass. WoW.com's Black Jelly is made out of blackberries. Go ahead, guess which of those three things I would actually eat.
• Oh, right. There was that whole Ferarro... thing.
  

Tags: downtime, maintenance, rolling-restart, roundup, server-downtime, server-maintenance, server-status, status, tmp, tuesday, tuesday-maintenance, tuesday-morning-post

Filed under: Analysis / Opinion, Odds and ends, News items