We all know how it starts. A stolen glance across the sands of Silithus. That moment where you eyes meet, a shared second in the Deeprun Tram as you chase your foe back down the tunnel with your finger hovering over the Hammer of Wrath, but hesitate to hurl it home. You know your past, your history, your ambitions, you're a draenei, you're a member of the Alliance, it's all so clear. But somewhere, somewhere there's a longing for something more. Something different. Something... green.

And before you know it, you're being catapulted from Kezan into a new world, a world of orcs and blood elves, of trolls and tauren, of bloodlust rather than heroism. It's new, it's exciting, but is it anything more than just a fleeting visit? Can you really stay in this place, with the in-fighting and the slums and the ramshackle, riotous city of Orgrimmar as your home?

Have you ever cheated on your faction? Been deepsing with the enemy? You're far from alone. It's certainly safe to say that some players are like swans: when it comes to factions, they mate for life. But others are like sparrows, flitting from faction to faction. If you're a sparrow rather than a swan, are your dalliances with the dark side flippant flings, or full-blown affairs? Are you truly bi-factional, or will one always take precedence, always be your home and your heart?

Long-term WoW Insider readers will likely remember the post-Cataclysm dissection where the developers discussed the mistakes they had made and how they planned to rectify them for future expansions. Well, a twitter user has asked Blizzard Lead Systems Designer Greg "Ghostcrawler" Street the same question, for Mists of Pandaria, and Ghostcrawler had the following to say in reply:

We've had the new talent system now for eight months, and it's had time to settle in, so it seems that it's an appropriate time to see whether it has been a success in its objectives, to assess the pros and cons of the new system.

In case you forgot, Wrath of the Lich King featured 71 talent points, which were distributed over three trees, resulting in some entertaining builds, and no requirement to place the last talent in the tree. The Burning Crusade was similar, but with 10 fewer points, and slightly smaller trees as a result. By the time Cataclysm rolled around, adding an additional five levels, there was concern about this system being bloated, daunting, and unnecessarily complex. So, with Cataclysm came a simplification: 31-point talent trees. At the time, Zarhym explained the change as follows:

Zarhym

We'd rather have a simpler design with a lot of depth, than a complicated but shallow design. The goal for Cataclysm remains to remove a lot of the passive (or lame) talents, but we don't think that's possible with the current tree size. To resolve this, we're reducing each tree to 31-point talents.

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A little while back, someone asked me why I ended up playing a shaman. I'll give you a brief run-down of the events that led me to a little red-headed dwarf... and the other shaman!

My first character was a paladin. I'd been told to play one by the people who talked me into playing WoW in the first place, and I kind of liked it. As much as anything, it was a sentimental attachment. My friend Chris had made the character for me, and named it, and my friend Mark had taught me roughly how to play it. I was still kind of a noob, when I was leveling my way through a zone and saw what I now know was a shaman. I'd been trying to kill some mobs, and having a hard time, partly because I was new to the game, and partly because I was specced into holy.

This shaman planted their totems and unleashed a torrent of lightning bolts into one of these tricky mobs, and it died before it even got to them. I was impressed! I didn't even know, at the time, what that class was, but a brief description to my guild-mates soon clarified it. I decided at that point that my next class would be one of those, and rolled one the same day. And somewhere along the way I lost the bug for massive DPS and started healing.

That's me, but what about you? What made you choose your class? Was it seeing another? A feeling of personal identity? A preference from previous games?

The mystery of Pierre and the Sky Claw continues. These creations burst onto the scene in the patch 5.2 PTR patch notes back in January, when we were enthralled by Pierre's cooking capabilities, and the Sky Claw's two-person mount potential. Engineers were thrilled at their appearance, but alas, it was not to be.

When we last heard from our potent pair, they had been recently removed from patch 5.2, for undisclosed reasons. This last update came our way in early March, and we have had no word since. Until now. Blizzard Lead Content Designer Cory "Mumper" Stockton tweeted the following:

The latest set of updates to the latest build landed on the Blizzard blog last night, and there are some more pretty big changes coming in on the PTR. As well as the usual class balance fixes, which bring some more number balancing to Atonement for discipline priests, as well as to paladins' Battle Healer, there are some fairly notable quality of life changes being made to the older content in this expansion.

You'll probably say I'm being paid off by Blizzard or something (I wish I was), that I'm a sell-out and shouldn't be trusted, and should be thrown to the dogs and such, but I love WoW. Of all the games I've played in my life, WoW is the one that's become an obsession. It's become a career even, it's now not just what I do in my spare time, but what I do in my work time, too. And I love it.

I was chatting with my friend Missy, a huge lover of lore, and we were discussing how different our gameplay experiences were. I rush through content, I'm all about the end-game, and getting there was quickly as possible. In scenarios, I get distracted by the killing, I just want to make with the stabby or the zappy or the choppy, and use my character's abilities in the most efficient and intelligent way I can to get the job done. I miss huge chunks of story because I'm just not looking out for it. And Missy plays completely differently, always with an eye on the story, always with an eye on the quest text and the NPC dialog and all the rest. I haven't watched a skippable cutscene in a really long time. And our own lore lovers here at WoW Insider are just the same, I'm sure Sally despairs of me. I know Anne does.

But we all love this game. There's something there for all of us, and for the hardcore raiders, the RPers, the people who never have max-level characters at all, the pet battlers, the people who only have an hour or two every third wednesday, they've all got a place in Azeroth.

And that's why WoW is a great game, in my book. But that's my book. What do you think?

Some like it hot(fixes), and we're no different here at WoW Insider, so when the latest batch dropped we just had to share. We actually posted about one of these changes, regarding the Shado-Pan assault trinkets and their PvP use, earlier today. Let's jump straight in to this latest batch.

Blizzard

Classes
Warlock
Destruction

• Fixed an issue where targets of Havoc were receiving more damage than intended from Immolate.

Quests

• Eyes of the Thunder King: Engaging Unblinking Eyes and Focused Eyes will now place all members of the raid in combat, preventing players from releasing when they die.

Raids, Dungeons, and Scenarios
Throne of Thunder
Ra-den

• Fixed an issue where it was possible to have 2 instances of Unstable Vita active during the Ra-den encounter.

Twin Consorts

• Crane Rush now deals 5 million damage, down from 30 million damage in Raid Finder difficulty.

Items

• Brutal Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 4400 to Strength, down from 8800 Strength, and the effect duration now lasts 30 seconds, up from 15 seconds when the effect is activated in PvP combat.
• Tyrannical Primal Diamond when socketed to a bind-on-equip helmet now causes the helmet to become soulbound.
• Vicious Talisman of the Shado-Pan Assault now grants a reduced bonus of 4400 to Agility, down from 8800 Agility, and the effect duration now lasts 40 seconds, up from 20 seconds when the effect is activated in PvP combat.

Bug Fixes

• Resolved an issue where Capacitive Primal Diamond's effect was not activating properly.

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