Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. While we received notice this past week that PvP season 10 could end as early as today, a later tweet from Bashiok confirmed the actual end date will be Nov. 29. Alas, this means we can't expect patch 4.3 until at least that date, meaning this will end up being the longest half a month ever, and I won't be able to spend my Thanksgiving vacation running End Time until my eyes bleed.

In an effort to keep myself entertained in the meantime, I've turned to one man: the Guy on a Buffalo. This man is the paragon, nay, the pinnacle of what humanity can be. Let his power and majesty inspire you, with dreams of his ruggedness filling the nights and days until patch 4.3 drops. ... Also, the song is pretty catchy.

Buffalo riding aside, there is a lot of cool stuff going on in WoW news, right from the class balance Q&A to WoW Insider's first children's book and first weekly WoW news vidcast. Downtime today is a quick series of rolling restarts starting at 5 a.m. Pacific, so why not take some time and get caught up? Our usual roundup awaits after the break.

Hot news and features

• The WoW dev team recently held a class balance live Q&A, and we have the transcript.
• Blizzard clarified the patch 4.3 point conversion sell-back policy this week.
• Ghostcrawler offered some explanation for the biggest patch 4.3 balance changes.
• WoW has dropped to 10.3 million subscribers.
• Darkmoon Island has some hidden secrets -- like these mysterious ghosts.
• We give you a quick rundown of the new Darkmoon Island games.
• Anne has five reasons to love The Burning Crusade.
• Ol' Grumpy opines on gear inflation.
• J. Allen Brack recently spoke to Wired magazine about pandaren and Pet Battles.
• World of Wardrobe braves the Black Temple for some tier 6 gear.

Class news and guides

• Totem Talk had advice for healing DK tanks and heroic instance groups. We also take a look at procs for the elemental shaman in Dragon Soul.
• Lichborne looks at death knight news from BlizzCon.
• Encrypted Text discusses the impact of PoisonSwapper on the rogue class.
• Spiritual Guidance offers shadow priest advice for Ragnaros.
• The Light And How To Swing It discusses secondary stats for retribution paladins. We also look back at the history of the paladin tank and a guide to using your hands as a holy paladin.
• Scattered Shots looks at hunter gear in patch 4.3.
• Shifting Perspectives explains the drawbacks of the active shifting model from a balance druid's perspective. We also have a feral perspective on the topic.
• Raid Rx takes a look at the class balance Q&A from a healer's perspective.
• Arcane Brilliance looks at the class balance Q&A for mages.
• The Care and Feeding of Warriors looks to the future of tanking.
• Blood Pact looks at the class balance Q&A from a warlock's perspective.

Dungeons, items, professions, PvP, and more

• Addon Spotlight offers some addons that could help you prepare for Pet Battles.
• WoW Rookie helps you fight boredom in game.
• Gold Capped offers tricks for getting around the realm transfer gold limit and making money on the glyph market.
• Ready Check discusses the human side of the Raid Finder.

Odds and ends

• Like the current batch of Darkmoon Faire minigames? You should see some of the rejected ones.
• Rumors of mass layoffs at Blizzard have been flying, but they're false.
• Know Your Lore tells the stories of Illidan the Betrayer and Queen Azshara.
• We gave Mr. Robot your questions and got some answers.
• Check out these awesome WoW sack dolls.
• The Lawbringer looks at what the annual pass really obligates you to do.
• Even in WoW, a lot of the wealth is in very few hands.

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Tags: downtime, maintenance, realm-downtime, realm-maintenance, rolling-restarts, roundup, scheduled-downtime, scheduled-maintenance, server-downtime, server-maintenance, server-status, tuesday, tuesday-downtime, tuesday-maintenance, tuesday-morning, tuesday-morning-post

Filed under: Realm Status, News items