Happy Tuesday morning everyone. The big news of the week is, of course, the advent of the patch 5.4 PTR, and with that comes the avalanche of sweet, sweet PTR news. There's so much of it we can't even fit it into one category in our roundup. Thus, with no further ado, I'm just going to give it all to you. Realm maintenance this morning is scheduled to last from 5 a.m. to 11 a.m. Pacific time, so you should have time to read at least some of it.

Patch 5.4 PTR news and features

• Check out the official patch 5.4 PTR patch notes.
• Virtual Realms could end the scourge of low population realms forever.
• Proving Grounds, which were initially announced as a feature of Mists, finally make their debut on the patch 5.4 PTR.
• Datamining points to a possible pet battle tournament and new battle pets in patch 5.4.
• Item enhancements will scale to any level of gear in patch 5.4, including heirlooms.
• You'll be able to catch up on legendary quest drops in Throne of Thunder come patch 5.4.
• There's some major world changes coming to patch 5.4. Check out this video for a sneak peek.
• Check out some of the datamined mount, pet, and armor models from the patch 5.4 PTR.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Recently on Twitter, Lead systems designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street was asked what issues he'd fix if he could immediately wave a wand and make it better. One of the ones he mentioned was ability bloat. Ability bloat is the term used to describe a class needing to press too many buttons simply to perform the basic tasks expected of them in group PvE and PvP content.

Ability bloat is certainly something that's been on my mind as well, so this week we'll consider the possibility of ability bloat in death knights and figure out various ways to address it. Much like how talents were pared down for Mists, I wouldn't be surprised to see abilities pared down in major ways for the next expansion, and we might as well start anticipating it.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. We're another week into patch 5.3, but alas, no sign of the patch 5.4 PTR just yet. Still, the news has been coming in copious amounts, so we're probably okay. Of course, the big news is Flexible raids. Now, having 12 signups for 10 raid slots may not mean you need to leave 2 people behind. This, of course, has generated a lot of discussion, much of which is summed up in an editorial by our own Matt Rossi.

There's lots more things, big and small, to cover, and we have the usual roundup of the week's news below. As of this writing, there's not been any announced downtime for this morning, but whether there is or not, a little break to get caught up can't hurt.

Hot news and features

• Check out the latest patch 5.3 hotfixes for June 4 and June 10.
• Hunters got some pretty massive changes in the latest round of hotfixes.
• Legendary questers rejoice. Lei Shen will now always drop Titan Runestones.
• We may have a new Battle.net desktop client coming our way.
• Some people are reporting higher-than-usual latency and disconnects in patch 5.3.
• The Heroic Scenario reward system now won't lock you out of loot just because you ran a normal scenario first.
• Elite PvP gear rewards may once again require a minimum rating in patch 5.4.
• The 2013 BlizzCon Art and Movie contests are now open for submissions.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

So Rossi bought this up in his last column, and I feel like it is a valid question. If haste is a valid gearing strategy for Paladins, why shouldn't it be for the other tanks? The idea of haste and critical strike as being valid, even desirable stats for a tank seems almost anathema, but as of Mists, especially, it's worth a look. Paladins even have a gearing strategy built around haste. Are they the only ones? Should death knights be considering haste and critical strike rating? Should Blizzard be looking at ways to make haste and critical strike rating more desirable for tanks? We'll consider those questions this week.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. It's another one of those weird weeks when the biggest stories of the week aren't even about the game itself, but about movies and upcoming games that we aren't technically supposed to know about.

Of course, there's plenty of cool stuff going on in game as we gradually discover those fun little secrets and smaller changes to patch 5.3, and we always have a good assortment of guides to help you get through the game. Downtime this morning is a series of rolling restarts at 7:00 a.m. PDT, but that's a good excuse to take a small break and read on for our usual roundup.

Hot news and features

• Project Titan has seen a developmental shakeup. Adam explains why he's not too worried about it.
• The Warcraft movie will start filming in 2014. This video recaps the history the long-upcoming movie so far.
• Patch 5.3 offers new Cataclysm gear vendors for catching up your ilevel.
• The Armored Bloodwing mount is now available for purchase at the Pet Store.
• PvP vendors are back.
• Blizzard's looking for more feedback on possible upcoming pet battle changes.
• One of the smaller, more mysterious additions in patch 5.3 is the presence of a new red dragon near Ahn'Qiraj.
• Blizzard's coming to the San Diego Comic-Con.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

From a purely game mechanics point of view, I should love Battlefield Barrens. One of my favorite things to do in Vanilla WoW was head out to the plaguelands and mindlessly grind scourgestones while I read guild chat or watched TV. Sometimes, you don't really want the dedicated direction of dailies or quests, you just wanted to get some progress done on your terms, when you feel like it. Battlefield Barrens, with the ability to grind resources to use for a single weekly quest or for currency for some decent gear and vanity items, would seem to be perfect for that.

But I can't go back to the Barrens, because I'm Alliance. When I go to the Barrens, I've heard from outside sources and little story snippets that I'm supposedly infiltrating the Horde to sew chaos and dissension. Despite that, the actual quest dialogue and gameplay tells a different story. From the moment I hit Durotar, I have to put up with trolls taunting me about the loss of Theramore and trolls threatening to kill me. Even Vol'jin makes me "earn his trust," and threatens to feed me to Sylvanas if I question him. To top it all off, it's not clear that I'm getting anything in return but the vague hope that Vol'jin's Trolls might kill an extra orc or two before the Alliance starts their main offensive.

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Filed under: Breakfast Topics

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street has indicated that Blizzard is pretty happy with the new Mists of Pandaria talent design, and I have to agree with him. While it does suck to wait 15 levels between new talent choices while leveling a new alt, otherwise the new talent system allows real flexibility and interesting, meaningful choices, arguably more than we had under the 51 or 31 point talent systems, where almost every tier had a clear best choice for whatever role you were playing.

That said, there's always room for improvement, and the devs have mentioned they plan to use patch 5.4 as another opportunity to go over talent trees and bolster talents that see less use or otherwise feel underpowered. With that in mind, this week we'll look at the death knight tree and pick out some candidates for a patch 5.4 redesign.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Happy Tuesday morning, everyone. Patch 5.3 is out, and we have both a written guide and a video guide to the top 5 things you need to know. Beyond that, of course, we have guides to just about aspect of the new patch that'll tell you what to do to get the most out of it. Our usual roundup of those guides and the rest of the week's news can be found below. Maintenance today is 4 hours, starting at 5 a.m. PDT, so you should have some time.

Hot news and features

• Check out the official patch 5.3 patch notes.
• Check out our roundup of the patch 5.3 PvP changes.
• Read up on the latest patch 5.3 hotfixes for May 21, May 22,
• As with all patches, patch 5.3 has some known issues.
• Epic Scenario rewards are here. Don't lock yourself out of them.
• We have a guide to the new battle pets of patch 5.3.
• The random battleground queue system had to be disabled temporarily due to bugs.
• Blizzard's looking for feedback on some proposed pet battle changes.
• With the new battle pets in Karazhan, there's more reason to run the dungeon than ever. Here's a guide to soloing the Chess event.
• We take a look at farming Lesser Charms of Good Fortune in patch 5.3.
• The one-per-realm restriction for death knights is gone.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items

Every week, WoW Insider brings you Lichborne for blood, frost, and unholy death knights. In the post-Cataclysm era, death knights are no longer the new kids on the block. Let's show the other classes how a hero class gets things done.

By the time you read this, patch 5.3 should be on live servers. We've already written a couple columns on what patch 5.3 will mean for death knights, but as always, things change on the PTR. With that in mind, this week we'll take a final look at patch 5.3 for death knights and what you can expect and do once the servers are back up (if they aren't already). I also have a couple notes on completing Wrathion's legendary quest line for death knights.

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Filed under: Death Knight, (Death Knight) Lichborne

Patch 5.3 is here. As you read this, the servers should be down to apply the patch. This means you'll want to use this time get caught up on all the latest patch 5.3 news, which, as always, you can find right here. Start off with our patch 5.3 roundup for an overview of everything. You'll also want to check out our exclusive interview with Lead Systems Designer Greg Ghostcrawler Street. Gamebreaker TV also did an interview with Ghostcrawler and Senior PvP Designer Brian Holinka.

You can also check the roundup below for more of this week's WoW news, from patch 5.3 and elsewhere. Realm maintenance begins at 3 a.m. PDT today and is expected to last 8 hours, so you'll have time.

Hot news and features

• Here's what WoW newbies should know about new patches.
• We have a guide to the lore and story of patch 5.3.
• Patch 5.3 will allow you level mining and herbalism exclusively in Pandaria.
• We have a roundup of patch 5.3's battle pet changes.
• We have a preview of some new patch 5.3 scenarios, including The Secrets of Ragefire and Battle on the High Seas.
• Blizzard has posted some patch 5.3 interviews of their with Tom Chilton.
• Check out the final patch 5.3 PTR note updates for March 14.
• Ghostcrawler outlines some Vengeance changes coming to the patch 5.4 PTR.
• Convert to Raid interviews Blizzard's Lead Encounter Designer Ion Hazzikostas.

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Filed under: Realm Status, News items