Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. With another week comes another beta patch, and this one features my favorite new thing from the expansion, Pet Battles. Finally, I can beat up little animals in style, baby. Warcraft Pets has a good guide to getting started. If you're not in the beta or if you're waiting for Mists to go live, don't worry. You can bide your time on the live servers while you fly around the shape of a big old cat -- assuming you have a friend who's willing to buy WoW.

No matter how you're spending your time these days, you'll have to spend at least a few minutes of it away from WoW this morning, as we have rolling restarts headed our way at 5 a.m. PDT. While you wait for the servers to finish rolling over, why not catch up on the latest news? Our usual roundup awaits you.

Hot news and features

• Reputation rewards are showing up on the Mists of Pandaria beta. We have a gallery of the rewards for the Golden Lotus, Klaxxi, Shado-Pan, and August Celestials reputations.
• The Wrathion quest chain is now active in the Mists beta, and we have footage.
• Blizzard's introduced a new guild mentoring program designed to recruit guilds to help new players.
• Blizzard's released a preview of the upcoming Diablo III character profile viewer.
• This week, we transmog some Final Fantasy 6 costumes.

• Rossi examines the consequences of removing no-brainer talents.
• What would happen if WoW implemented Diablo-style scaled raid difficulty?
• Anne examines the possibility of just making WoW more difficult in general, while Rossi pronounces the death of the hardcore game.
• Grandpappy Frostheim gets the final word by explaining why the game is actually harder than it used to be.
• Rossi tells you why lore matters.

Class news and guides

• Lichborne looks at some the new advantages and challenges for new death knights in Mists of Pandaria.
• Encrypted Text plays with Shadow Blades, the new level 87 rogue skill.
• The Care And Feeding of Warriors offers a practical guide for the Mists warrior.
• Blood Pact checks out warlock leveling in Mists.
• Spiritual Guidance looks at playing a discipline priest in Mists.

Dungeons, items, professions, PvP, and more

• Check out our guide to WoW mounts you can purchase with real money.
• WoW Archivist relates the history of Alterac Valley.
• Olivia rounds up some of the best reader-submitted gold making tips from a recent Breakfast Topic.
• Dragon Soul's Power of the Aspects buff is up to 30% strength.
• Addon Spotlight highlights six essential addons.

Odds and ends

• Blizzard was at the 2012 San Diego Comic-Con and previewed some new upcoming merchandise.
• Diablo III's patch 1.0.3b is live.
• Alas, Sam Raimi will not be directing the Warcraft movie.
• Have you ever been starstruck by a member of the WoW community?
• Know Your Lore lays out the problems with all these world-destroying evils. We also discuss the final boss of Mists of Pandaria.
• 15 Minutes of Fame interviews a librarian who's working to bring gaming to the library.
• Blizzard announced that recent charity auctions have raised $330,00 for St. Jude's Children's Research Hospital.

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Filed under: News items