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Today we have 38 days until we can begin hopping on boats and zepplins to travel to Northrend and begin the much touted Death Knight Starting Experience. I thought I would go over a few things that you, me, or anyone can do to pass the next 38 rotations of our big blue marble.

Farm Herbs - With the new Inscription profession coming in the patch that is expected to go live in 9 days, there are a multitude of herbs that you can gather, even if you are a level 70 and fresh to herbalism. If you want to check out the numbers of herbs you may need to get a character up to 375, the level that you will be able to learn up to before the actual expansion.

Farm Ore - Once you have all the herbs you want, you may want to think a bit on the professions your Death Knight, if you choose to make one, will have. Mine will be going Incription/Weaponsmith, since the Death Knight's most noticeable piece of gear is his blade. I would look into the burn rate on materials for the profession, including the steps needed to become a Weaponsmith, then begin gathering those materials up to power to 375 Blacksmithing as early as possible into Wrath.

Prepare for Achievements - There are hundreds of achievements coming in Wrath, and while some will have to wait for the expansion to go live, there are plenty of Achievements you can begin working on now, like exploration, professional, and more. You can go to dungeons, go to NPCs, or just wait for 3.0.2 to be live and start /love'ing the critters in your life.

Grind Rep - There are a number of reputation Achievements in the expansion that rely on reputations, and some of those even award titles. If you are a druid, you might find the Guardian of Cenarius to be one destined for your To Do list, and with the huge leaps in rep for the Encrypted Twilight Texts, you can get the rare Exalted Cenarion Circle part done in no time, assuming you are 70.

Obtain the Impossible - When 3.0.2 hits, there are several raid based rewards that will no longer be available, so why not spend some time now shooting for them? Champion of the Naaru, Hand of Ad'al, and the Amani Warbear are all going bye bye, for those who do not have them, once the new patch goes live, so I encourage you to go for them with all you have, if that is your wish.

There you have it, folks, a short list among many things you can do to pass your time for the next 38 days, that is if you are not participating in one election or another, working your ass off to earn the time off to play Wrath, or just, ya know, taking a break and trying out the competition while they are still around. What are you doing for the next 38 days?

A few days back I saw an entry from Siha, over at the best Paladin blog around, Banana Shoulders, that Pike made a challenge to folks to show their banks. Well, I have 4 level 70 characters, and a mule with his own 3 tab guild bank, so I am not going to show all of them. I will, though, show a couple of my level 70 banks. First we have my main, Medros.
So what we have is the bank on the right, and bags on the left. The bank has a fair number of pets/mounts(the section I am calling the 3.0.2 consumables), but the bags have the most. I count about 45 pets or so and I am still working in live on getting more. The next section over is random soulbound items, ones that I pick up from mobs, stuff like the Picnic Basket, and so on. The far right section at the top is my gear. Weapons or armor that I get, make, or buy. Yeah, there is a lot. A few pieces are sentimental, like the first Blue I got in Outlands, the mace given to Med by Tirion Fordring, and Uther's Strength, all which are connected to the back story of Medros.

Bottom row we have the quest items, like the warbeads, insignias, and so on. Some of these and some from the top middle will be turned into currency in a special tab come Wrath. Next over we have food, and as you can tell, I have some of the top of the line. Next we have consumables. Potions, elixits, temporary weapon enchants, all of these will go right here. Lastly we have trade goods. The stuff that falls into this is stuff like the Primals, motes, ore, bars, and, in other professions, herbs, gems, and so on. Your cloth goes here, and apparently so does my Pumpkin Bag from 2 Hallow's End ago.


Now for Telaan's bag and bank. I have a couple of different rows for this toon. The top row, which I will one day set up on all my toons(likely post Wrath), is his RP gear, I will likely set up 'sections' for each of my toon's possible specs. For Med, Telaan, and Arita it would be one section for DPS, Tank, and Heal, just so I can keep these straight. When I post the wedding photos(coming soon I promise) you will see that Telaan has all of the gear up there on, except the ring, which his beloved gave to him. There are a couple alternate pieces, but otherwise it's all original. Next to that we have the enchanters stuff, a section set up for my enchanting toon.

Otherwise everything is set up the same as Med. On Telaan there is a Miners bag and a gem bag, which allows me to stock the plentiful ore and powder, as well as the decent number of gems. Until we had a date for Wrath, there was more than 40 of each rare gem, and more of the uncommon gems. I do not keep epic gems in stock, as they are too unpredictable to risk. Last thing I wanted to point out was the gold that Telaan has. 11,325 gold at time of screen shot, and has almost 12,000 now. He is the stores for my pre Wrath stock piling, and all excess gold goes to him.

To answer a few questions I expect to get, the bag mod is Ark Inventory, which allows you to look at the keyring, bags, bank, wearing, and guild vault of any toon you have on any realm. The mod that shows the gold in the red line there, that is called Simple Gold. It easily, on mouse over, shows your gold on every character, and without mouse over it shows the gold on your current one. It's a handy mod to have, especially when you want to know where you can snag gold from in a pinch. Enjoy my bags, and let me know what interesting things you have!

So we look to have a date for the upcoming 3.0.2 patch, which will bring in some of the features of the Wrath of the Lich King expansion, so I thought I would give you the lowdown on the stuff that will make it into 3.0.2 based on the latest PTR builds, what you have to wait until the expansion for, and what won't be in until much later on.

The Patch - We know we will see the Barbershop feature in the patch, giving us the chance to finally change those hairstyles we've had for up to four years. Achievements will make it in, so while a few will wait for many of the Achievements that require Northrend to complete, we can get many of our desired achievements out of the way before we slag through the lengthy install process for the expansion. Inscription will be active, which is surprising a lot of people since Jewelcrafting was not available unless you had the expansion. A feature we will see that has many of my character's banks rejoicing is the Pets/Mounts tab, which will be in for the patch. Thousands of vanity pets will soon find a new home!

Hunters will get to customize their pets in a new talent style of ability system, with the old system of training points going the way of the Ghost Wolf. Hunters will also get Exotic pets, so expect to see Devilsaurs, Rhinos, Chimeras and Worms in your local bank. Stormwind Harbor will finally open up, and King Varian Wrynn will return to Stormwind, bringing a new era to the land of Azeroth. The patch will bring in new UI features like the Calendar system, built in threat meter, and many new emotes.

In the way of combat we will also be seeing several stat changes. Hit, Crit, and Haste will affect Melee and Spell attacks, while Spell Damage and Healing stats will be unified into a universal Spell Power, meaning more gear can be shared between the various casting classes. Lastly on this section, channeling and casting interrupts are changing, with any hits after the second no longer interrupting or stopping a cast bar, though I believe full spell interrupts like Kick and Counterspell will still work as usual. As you can tell, the patch will be bringing some big things for all players of the game.

The Expansion - As big as the patch is, the expansion is even bigger. Of course we get to travel to Northrend, which can be accessed from boats in either Stormwind Harbor or Menethil Harbor. There is also the leveling to 80 thing, which is a pretty important expansion-only feature to mention. From my travels in beta, this is going to be an area that is well worth the time to buy the expansion for. The mobs are interesting, and often unique. The zones are huge, and each has many quest hubs. Medros, one of my Paladins, has gone through all of Borean Tundra, Dragonblight, Howling Fjord, and part of Grizzly Hills before he hit 76.

I am in Sholazar Basin, have left a bunch of unfinished quests in Grizzly Hills, and I have yet to enter any Northrend instances. I haven't even touched quests in Zul'Drak, Crystalsong(quests Not Yet Implemented), Storm Peaks, or Icecrown. I feel it is quite possible Medros could ding 80 without even touching the top two zones, and on Live it would be even easier with guildies to run dungeons with. No need to worry, folks, there will be no lack of things to do when Wrath hits, even beyond the 80 Ding.

With reaching 80, you immediately have the chance to hop into the 10 man Naxxramas dungeon, which is followed by the 25 man, and the other three Raid dungeons, The Nexus, Eye of Eternity, and Ulduar. According to Blizzard's reps, you should be able to enter Naxx 10 man with just the quest and dungeon gear you have when you hit 80 or shortly thereafter, and the gear progresses naturally from there. While Icecrown Glacier the raid will not be in at launch, it should launch in 3.1, which can be expected a couple months into 2009.

While we have not seen any sign yet of the Dance studios, the Death Knight is definitely the biggest thing not yet listed, and it will require the expansion to create one. You too get to go through the Starting Experience, likely the first example of the implemented phasing technology Blizzard has made a huge deal of that most people will see. You will be able to Death Grip people from vast distances, summon ghouls from the bones of friends and enemies, and ride and walk on water using the Path of Frost ability given to our friends of the Ebon Blade.

Of course we have the little stuff, like new profession abilities, discovery for many crafters, and so on, not to mention the excitement of the culmination of 2 years of Blizzard's efforts. So while there is no doubt plenty to get excited about in patch 3.0.2 when it hits, expected to be on Octber 14th, there is yet more to get pumped about in Wrath of the Lich King, on store shelves, and online, November 13th.

I have been blogging a little less than often in the last few days, but I promise I have a few good reasons. I tried to get some posting done in advance, and it worked, to a degree. I did run out of advance writing on Friday. The reason I was in need of working ahead, is because I had a couple of important events in the last week. The first was a private event in game, and while I will not go into what it entailed, let's just say it was an added level of connection for me, and involved a collar.

The second, this past Saturday, my Draenei Paladin was married at an as yet undiscovered location in the world by most players. I will be posting screenshots as soon as possible, but I had several high stress days where I tried to write the  words and timelines for both of these ceremonies, which mean a lot to me. Once the wedding was done, I decided to take a day to relax, and then I realized that my game time expires on the 30th, and I wanted to spend as much time as I can in game, in case I can't come back until around the time that Wrath is released.

I should be back into the writing now, and will do my best to get a few more 'in case' posts which can be posted just in case I am not able to write something on the day of. I also plan to do a podcast episode in the next day or two, and will try to edit it for release by the end of the week. In the meantime, enjoy the vibrant worldwide economy, check out my past posts, and see ya soon!

I figured that since the Achievement is quite possible the most asked about feature amongst my audience, I would give you a small peak at the ones I find neat, cool, or otherwise interesting.

1. It's Happy Hour Somewhere - This is cool simply because most of us drink so few beverages, just our normal water for the caster's among us. I would be interested to see how many people can find before they have to rely on the alcoholic beverages in the game, or whether most will simply head there first!
2. Well Read - 42 of the books found throughout the game, this will be one of the most widespread achievements to accomplish spanning from Tirisfal Glades to Tanaris, Northrend to Netherstorm. This is one I would consider worthy of more than 10 points, but I think that is the basic one for those that pretty much anyone can do.
3. Friend or Fowl? - This is one of the neatest, and most insanity causing quests in the new contest. I do not recommend even trying at the base, instead go and try when you get near the Explorer's League camp for the quests there.
4. To All The Squirrels I've Loved Before - This is another well traveled quest, with the idea being that you need to /love to each of these critters. To my knowledge no actual feeling of love must be felt, and no penalty is given if the critter is slaughtered immediately after. Most of the critters can be found in multiple locations, though there are a few with single zone locations. The highest level zone is Zul'Drak, though you can always try to run your way there and /love before you are dinner for the trolls there.
5. What A Long Strange Trip It's Been - There is a different one for each faction, but the general idea is the same. Complete all of the holiday achievements. This will take at least a year to complete, as only a few of the past holiday achievements are noted and each holiday has several of them. Essentially if it results in you getting an item, and you have the item still, it will recognize it. I imagine this will be a great deal of fun come the future holidays, and I am sure that at least a few of the composite achievements have titles.
   

So there you go, a peek at my top 5 neatest achievements in the Wrath beta, and coming Soon™ to a realm near you! What Achievements do you find cool, neat, interestingly named or just plain notable in the listings online? Let me know in the comments, Please!

My dear friend Jen from the Inside my Head and Hyper nonsense podcasts has begun to play on my home realm, Argent Dawn, in order to get to the level she wants to be at in order to be at the wedding of one of my characters to his in character paramour. I asked her the other day if there was anything I could help her with, and she responded 'a bag'. Being flush with mats and knowing any helpful guildies, I promptly went out and made her level 15 rogue 5 Netherweave Bags.

It was as I was mailing them off today that it hit me. 'Maybe this won't be the most helpful thing for her'. Playing over on the Beta servers, with limited resources and auction house prices that would make any capitalist glow, my little Death Knight has been stuck with mostly the bags he finds and the ones he had at creation. That is to say, 12 slot and 14 slot bags. I thought back to my days of leveling, and I recalled how much I hated to have to choose between items if my bags got full too far from a vendor.

I am beginning to think that maybe, just maybe, helping lowbies excuses them from learning some of the key lessons that any character leveling up needs to learn. How to wipe gracefully. How to conserve bag space. How to manage what you spend on to allow for training and repair. How to find a group for an instance. These and more are things that we all have to learn, but also things that I think we often forget. Back when I was playing the original beta I was a Leatherworking Paladin. Yup, I wore my leather gear proudly until just after the time when a Warrior I had become friends with asked 'why are you wearing a robe?'

To be fair, I was holy at the time, but even then I already disliked group healing as too often people died. Of course I was stacking totally the wrong things and didn't see that I was to be the healer in plate who could survive where the priest might be turned into Night Elf Jam. I was wearing resto druid gear, not Holy Paladin gear. This was the first of many lessons I learned leveling up, and I wonder if far too often these days, as the game is over ten million now and only going to grow as Wrath gets closer; do we spare our friends the lessons we learned at their own detriment? I still sent the bags, and will still help where I can, when I can. I will always wonder, though, how much I really help. 

I was sitting in game today, farming some herbs in preparation of the upcoming needs of inscription, and listening to my guild's run through Kara. As the leader ran through the do's and don't s of the Shade of Aran fight, I listened as one of our newest raiders, a fresh 70 priest named Thelvyn, made a point about an aspect of the fight that was different, and I was figuring this would quite possible be destined to be a 'Remember when...' type of moment.

I recall mine. My 'remember when...' moment was my first run through Kara. It's always a first, isn't it? Anyways, it was the fights leading up to Attumen, and I was right by the tank on every fight, meleeing my way to what I hoped would be a flaming stead. So when I heard that Midnight and Attumen charge, I wasn't worried, since those charges hadn't affected me before. Ha! I got too far from the group, then got aggro from some unlucky crits, and then BAM, the horse charges the dog pile, stunning almost everyone, then comes back to me, who died in about one and a half hits cause I had no healers.

I heard some voices piping up in vent, and recalled a few other folk's remember when moments. The one that came to mind was the rogue who, being new to Kara, didn't quite get the idea behind flame wreath, or perhaps had bad info, and wiped the raid. She took a few moments, gained her composure, and helped take Aran down the next try, and is now well dressed in epics and does more than her fair share of dps in any run.

We all have those moments, those times that we look back on and revel in our shame, our noobishness, our lack of knowledge of the game, or just forgetfulness. What are your 'remember when' moments? Do you have any feats of unbelievable luck, killing the boss with 1% left? Or are your moments all about mistakes made, noted, and learned from? Let me know in the comments!

I was thinking, recently, about the massive amount of pop culture in the game. There are things that others notice, and things that make me grin like a nerd often enough to be noticeable. I figured I would give you a list of my favorite pop culture references in WoW.

• Captured Firefly. This little thing is not only a neat looking vanity pet, but it is also a great throwback to the Series Premiere of the TV show Firefly.
• Strange Engine Part. This is another Firefly throwback, to an episode where the ship's engineer, Kaylee Fry(found in game as K. Lee Smallfry) mentions the Capissen model, but also in the Movie, where she says "Don't ride in anything with a Capissen 38 engine, they fall right out of the sky."
• BSG references are plentiful, from the Arena Tournament promos to the boss in SSC Fathom-Lord Karathress, a tip to Kara Thrace in BSG, to an actual mob in the Wrath beta, Kara Thricestar <Air Traffic Controller>. Clearly some BSG fans on the development team.
• Stargate SG-1 is another sci fi show with tips of the hat from WoW, with the team SG-1 being almost completely in game in the forms of Lieutenant Karter, Captain O'Neal, and Lieutenant Jackspring in the Champion's Hall in Stormwind. Guard Hammon also seems to be a tip to the General Hammond character from the start of the show's ten year run.
• One final sci fi reference I wanted to point out was one I noticed when we got close to the release of Burning Crusade, and that is the name of the leader of the Draenei, the Prophet Velen. This is a clear throw back to the character of Valen from Babylon 5.
• Now for a couple non Sci fi. Ok, so this one is a little sci fi, but if you were a kid back when I was, you recall Masters of the Universe, who's main character Adam you will find near the Alliance battle masters in Shattrath City right by his trusty orange mount, Battle Cat, and who talks about an undead stalking him in search of a Grey Skull.
• Lastly we have The Seal of Danzalar which comes from SSC as well. The flavor text refers to the final season of Buffy, and the item is a play on "The Seal of Danzalthar", which is the name of the seal that covers the Sunnydale Hellmouth.
  

Other shows that get references are The Simpsons, Captain Planet and the Planeteers, Finding Nemo and much more. Check out WoW Wiki's Pop culture page for your favorite TV shows, movies, and bits of culture in woW, then post them here for the rest of us to read!

Having finally spent time recording your searches in my client, I have a more thorough list to pick and choose from in my searches to answer for you today. I hope that some of these answer your query to your favored search service. Let's do some quickies first.

where are paladin trainer in outlands - there are none
wow "gold medallion" "spirit of competition" -win Battlegrounds
how to 2.4 to 3.0 0 - Get into the beta, or wait until the pre release patch
outlands jc design vendors - all over
tree form through outlands - Have fun!

Now for the longer ones:
all tameable pets in northern in wrath of the lich king - I don't know about northern, but Northrend and the hunter pets are I think not done yet, as just this past patch brought them 2 more classes of tameable pet. I would check out Petopia for more current data, though.

alchemy in wrath of the lich king - I hope it is incomplete and unpolished, because there feels like there is not much there, and what there is, takes too much to make. I will say no more for now, only that you wait. In the meantime, go to the Alchemy page on WoWHead's Wrath section for the latest. Just hit Last, and then Previous to see the newer stuff.

New Dire Bear Model wrath of lich - Nothing showing yet, but I would rather suspect it will be Glyph based.

netherwingquest line removed in wrath of the lich king - I have heard nothing about this, but there are some things that are being removed or changed for Wrath. I will look further into this once I have a toon on the beta realms who doesn't already have their drake.

leveling in outlands - ...is very fun, and will get better in wrath when you need to do about 3 of the zones to be Northred ready.

Lastly: abbey outland - Glad you found me!

I know, I know. Cheesy. But I am happy. This is the first time I have experienced a beta patch first hand in about 4 years. I am a little excited. Below you will find the thoughts I have as I work my way through reported and discovered changes.

-Death Knight's Frost Presence now gives an aura buff to everyone nearby for a walk on water buff. Blood Presence still gives nothing
-Death Knights now appear almost diseased in appearance. Eww.
-Can now check, read, and delete mail.
-Fishing trainer in Valiance now trains Grand Master. Cooking Trainer still blank. Same goes for Valgarde.
-Paladins cannot use Judgments. More properly put, they can cast them, but they have no effect. Still able to so decent damage.
-Warlocks now glow purple.
-Hunter's Kill Command has been changed, for the worse.
-IF guard still does not know what inscription is.
-Select bodies of water have schools of fish.
-Turkey killing achievement is still very hard to do in Valgarde proper
-The flight... master(?) at Amber Ledge now has the proper texture for her form.
-Apparently Titan's Grip, the long griped about dps nerf to the Fury Warriors, has been fixed to make those same Warriors machines of mass slaughter. Expect a slight tweak down of that talent in a later build.
-Even patches can be followed by downtime

And on that note, as the servers went down, I assume to fix the glow issues, the judgment issues, or just to randomly taunt beta testers, I will end this here. I would like to say that while I feel a Blizzcon release of Wrath would be awesome, I don't see it as feasible, but I feel the game will be released withing a short time after that. We now have level 80 and only one world zone left unreleased, as well as raid dungeons which need to see a few runs, likely the purpose of the mentioned premade realm. Look for more new soon!

[Update: 2:30 AM - After the lengthy shut down Paladins still cannot judge, and Death Knights still look diseased. Server is about to shut down again, and I am off to bed. Look for another update in the morning.]