We knew it was going to be a lot, but I think the game outsold even our expectations: Blizzard has announced that the game's second expansion, Wrath of the Lich King, sold 2.8 million copies worldwide in the first 24 hours, and undoubtedly many more in the weekend after that (we're expecting an announcement later this month around five million in the first 30 days). That makes the game the fastest selling PC game of all time, and by far the fastest-selling expansion of all time (remember that this isn't even a complete game that's flying off the shelves). The previous record, of course, was set by the Burning Crusade, which sold 2.4 million copies during launch.

Pretty huge, but when you consider that the game has 11 million subscribers around the world, those numbers are just about right. Looks like Morhaime is on to something -- as long as they have players ready to buy the game in numbers like this, Blizzard will undoubtedly release expansions as long as they can.

Thanks, Doug!

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

For the past two weeks, Insider Trader has been helping you level your Inscription cheaply and efficiently.

Beginners should read through the walkthrough up to skill point 100, as it not only shows you how to reach it, it discusses the basics of Inscription in detail and offers some helpful hints.

Once you've reached 100, move on to the guide to hitting 200. You will need to be at least level 20 to complete this!

This week, I am walking you from skill 200 to skill 305. At 225, you will need to be at least level 35, and by the time you hit 300, you will need to be level 50 in order to train from 301 to 375.

Remember to click on any of the Wowhead herb links to view detailed maps of where to find each herb!

The days of choosing a profession and maximizing it solely based on a few purples at the very end are no more. Not only will many more crafted epics be bind on equip, they will be available earlier than the maximum rank.

Instead, the incentive to choose between the available professions will be based more on fun and personal preference. Each profession is getting its own 'goody bag' of items that are fun and promote individual customization.

Intrigued? Here's an overview of what you can expect to see:

We reported last night that some of the PvP gear was being shown as discounted or even free, and players were reportedly flooding the vendors, trying to pick up cheap gear. Of course, we also warned that taking bugged gear could be considered an exploit, even as some veteran players warned that taking free gear could result in a server rollback, suspended accounts, or even banning.

Therein lies the question: did you bite? I can see arguments for both sides: maybe you stood your moral ground, said that that gear wasn't really supposed to be free, and didn't try to take advantage of a mistake one of Blizzard's coders made. Or maybe you said, "well, if it's on the live realms, it must be legit," and looted as much of the gear as you could (and maybe you're paying for it, too, either now or later this week).

So what'd you do? This isn't the first time a game-changing exploit has made loot accessible to players when it shouldn't be, so if given a possible exploit in the game, do you grab away and let Blizzard worry about their own mistakes, or do you decide not to take advantage of mistakes Blizzard didn't mean to make and wait for them to fix it while you do things fairly?

Off a question on professions we recently took in Ask A Beta Tester, it occurred to me that it would probably be helpful to provide players with a few ballpark figures on budgetary expectations for Northrend. Blizzard's been pretty frank about its desire to reduce ingame inflation, so it's reasonable to expect a number of compelling demands made on your e-wallet (especially if legions of grasping guild leaders worldwide get their wish and start taxing the living hell out of you). Bottom line? You're going to bleed gold out of your ears unless you exercise some financial restraint. But...whatever. Screaming over the ingame cost of everything keeps me from looking at my real-life stock portfolio. I need a drink.

PROFESSIONS: Your first few minutes on the continent, no matter where you land, are going to be pretty expensive if you train up your tradeskills immediately. Polar22 in the AABT comments provided an extremely helpful link to WarcraftEcon confirming that each major and minor trade skill, with the exception of First Aid, will cost 35g to level to Grand Master. First Aid is more expensive at 50g. So, assuming you train your two major tradeskills in addition to Fishing, Cooking, and First Aid, count on being out 190g in addition to whatever it will cost you to train new recipes. WarcraftEcon estimates the total damage for an average player will clock in around 400-500g for these initial recipes and the Grand Master skill-up. That sounds broadly accurate from my experience in the beta, so plan on toting 500g along if you want all of your professions trained up immediately. The bleed begins!

The folks over at WoW Economist have started up a blog on one of the most popular problems in World of Warcraft: making money, and lots of it. The truth is that it's not hard to do, whether you're working with professions, trying to hang in the AH, PvPing, or just starting out, but everyone's got a tip to share, it seems, and WoW Economist is no exception.

This time around, they've got a good short analysis up of what might happen to green BoEs in Wrath of the Lich King. Once upon a time, there was actually a good market for BoEs on the AH -- some of them even challenged Karazhan gear in the early days of level 70, so anyone new to 70 could just spend some time in the Auction House and pick up some nice gear for running the basic instances and starting to build up blues and epics. But in my experience the market has thinned out lately -- while there's always a market for enchanging materials you can get from BoEs, people aren't that interested in buying green gear with epics so easy to get elsewhere. Most of the time, I get more from vendors for greens than I can actually sell them for on the AH.

But WoW Econ says there's a bump on the way -- Death Knights are going to be shooting through 60-70 directly after Wrath, and they're going to want the level 66-70 greens floating around (plate gear with Strength and Stam on it), so that will probably sell well. But everything else is pretty much dried up -- DE it if you can, or just vendor it away and move on. The gold will come quicker in Northrend anyway.

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

This week's edition of Insider Trader will stand as an introduction to becoming a scribe. After covering some of the basic information you will need to know, I will walk you through the leveling process until you reach the 100th skill point.

I will also discuss Minor Inscription Research and glyphs in detail, ensuring that you can make informed choices when choosing how to level your inscription. In the coming weeks, I will continue with the guide until the new maximum, 450.

Hop on through the break to learn how to boost your scribe's levels quickly and cost-effectively.

It's a good thing the zombies are going away now, isn't it? For the past few days, I noticed -- or rather my money-making wife noticed -- that the undead throng was badly tanking Azerothian commerce. The reason is that a lot of players' bankers and Auction House entrepreneurs are low-level alts that succumbed easily to the plague and random zombie attacks. When a Level 65 city guard turned into a zombie, it would naturally aggro the low-level bank mules and auction house regulars, killing them instantly. It didn't help that most players-turned-minions-of-the-Scourge usually targeted the Banks and Auction Houses for infection. Actually, we even recommended it as the best course of action as a (not so) mindless ghoul.

When the disease grew potent enough to transform anyone it infected within a minute, it became practically impossible to accomplish anything. Especially not with Argent Healers calling for a hasty retreat. Entire cities -- or key areas of cities -- were quickly transformed into ghoulish carnivals and it was simply too bothersome to do any business. As a result, players couldn't put anything up on the Auction House nor could anyone buy anything, either, slowing commerce to a crawl. My wife's daily Auction House profits of upwards 500 Gold dwindled down to nary a copper with her alt being unable to collect from the mailbox, move stuff from the bank, or scan the Auction House, as she died istantly to roving zombies.

What's next in store for us? Did Blizzard really cave in to the demands of players who felt that the World Event disrupted their normal routine too much? Or is there something more devious waiting in the wings? I know my wife was so upset by being unable to conduct her business that she decided to hold off from logging in at least until the event died down. Now that the zombie infestation seems to be under control, perhaps business will pick up again. Or maybe not, depending on what Blizzard has prepared for Azeroth. One thing's for sure, these Dawn of the Dead-type events certainly take a bite out of the economy.

I ran into two common questions last night on the Dalaran coin post, so I thought I'd start off by answering those here. I apologize if we haven't yet gotten to everyone's questions; most of them, like Gurluas' question concerning The Missing Diplomat and the high elves in Northrend, we're just not 100% sure of the answer to yet, but I'll keep trying.

Keyra asks...

Just curious...the gold coins all have "Use: Throw this coin back into the Dalaran fountain", yet I've seen people commenting (as well as the author) that they'll carry the coin in their packs. What happens when/if you throw the coin back in?

When you toss a gold coin back into the fountain, you gain the "Lucky" buff for 2 minutes, increasing your chance to fish up any and all coins from the fountain (rather than fishing hooks or goldfish). You don't have to toss them back in if you don't want to, in which case they'll just occupy a bag slot like anything else, or you can sell them to a vendor (not for much). But most people throw the coin/s back in because fishing the coin up is enough to give you the Achievement for getting it. Particular coins would be carried solely for personal or sentimental reasons, i.e. I can definitely appreciate the irony and RP value of grimly hunting Arthas down like a dog while carrying a symbol of Sylvanas' wasted hopes.

Rexigar asks...

Question though, do we have to keep the coins for the achievement or does it count when we throw it back in?

It counts as of the moment you've fished it up. No matter what you do with it afterwards, the Achievement's yours. The same mechanic is true of everything else; once the game "knows" you've done something and an Achievement's gained, nothing can take it away.

We have a lot of profession questions today, but also a few about Achievements, the Beast Mastery 51-point talent, and what happens when you push Death Knights off a cliff:

Riley asks...

How is the Shaman Hex ability working? Does the target still have control of movement and does the PvP trinket work against it?

Hex is a the crowd-control spell for Shamans referenced by the devs at the class panel here, and it's been tinkered with a lot since we first heard about it. It was originally meant to be more of an emergency-only, short-duration CC. In its present form, Hex's duration has been increased to 30 seconds and it doesn't necessarily break on damage. However, in PvP the target can control where they go, the PvP trinket does work (you can also shapeshift out of it as a Druid), and it's considered a curse and can be dispelled by Mages, Druids, and restoration Shamans (who will have the ability do dispel curses with a 31-point talent Cleanse Spirit). Think of it as a somewhat odd combination of Counterspell, Fear, and Polymorph.

I have a confession to make; I love fishing. Most people seem to hate it, and it's certainly not one of the more popular professions to level, but I could pass a perfectly entertaining afternoon ingame doing nothing more than chatting on vent and emptying pools of delicious and lucrative fish. Blizzard made a lot of effort towards improving the fishing experience in Burning Crusade, and tons of people wound up leveling it for a shot at Mr. Pinchy, the Find Fish skill, or the high-end raiding food buffs like Spicy Crawdad and Blackened Sporefish.

You'll find an array of new fish and pools in Wrath, but for my money the two great joys are fishing in the Dalaran sewers and the Dalaran wishing fountain. The fountain is actually the more interesting of the two for a reason we'll cover in a bit, but you'll also need the sewers if you're interested in a new noncombat pet and the Accomplished Angler achievement (the one rewarding the "Salty" title, which I'm sure no one in the game ever intends to abuse).

Spoiler warning: if you don't want to know the disgusting but highly interesting things you'll coax out of the Dalaran sewer system, just keep scrollin'.

Apologies to Paulo Coelho fans for borrowing his title, but we have two Alchemy-related questions to start us off today, in addition to questions on Blacksmithing, cinematics, and dailies:

Horizons asks...

Do the alchemy specializations in wrath still work the same way as they do now in BC? For example, will I still have a chance of getting 5 wrath potions even when I'm leveling starting at 375 such as Wrath Elixirs or Icy mana potions? And will transmute spec ever be fixed?

Yup, alchemy specializations work the exact same way in Wrath. As a potions master, I've already procced a few, but don't expect to see the Runic Mana or Runic Healing potion recipes until...I want to say it's 410 Alchemy. You'll skill up on the array of new elixirs like Elixir of Mighty Thoughts and Elixir of Mighty Agility until then, but do save mats for the new Alchemy trinkets that become available at (I think) 400, like Mighty Alchemist's Stone. We'll have more information soon on materials you'll start getting in Northrend that you'll want to set aside for crafting.

Last week we reported that 38 Studios, a company working on its own MMO property, had picked up the Azeroth Advisor, a custom newsletter directed towards players of World of Warcraft. At the time, we were slightly confused -- why would another gaming company want to purchase a guide written to promote and help players of a competitor's game? To get the answer, we went straight to the top, and sat down to talk with Brett Close, CEO of 38 Studios, about the reasons behind his company's purchase of the Azeroth Advisor and the technology behind it.

Last week, Curt Schilling, the company's founder, spoke on The Instance podcast about the buyout (that took place in May of this year), and what Mentor Media's newsletter and technology had to offer 38 Studios, so we asked Close about that, including how they planned to extend the custom newsletters to games that didn't have WoW's Armory and why they want to support players of a competitor's MMO. And we also talked about the fact that the newsletter is going free and why they decided to start giving it away.

The conversation with 38 Studios' CEO starts right after the break.

Our friends at BigDownload have a long but interesting feature up about that Comcast bandwidth limit and how it might affect PC gamers like us. Even though they chat with a lot of people higher up in both the ISP and gaming industry, the bottom line hasn't really changed: most people won't be affected by the limit, and if you are, there are things you can do about it. As we determined last time, at max, even if you run WoW 24/7 the entire month, you're still using only about 5gb, nowhere near enough to trip Comcast's limit. And even if there's a big patch download that comes through, it'll still be a very, very small percentage of people that come anywhere near it. While Comcast may change things in the future, there are a few voices already speaking out against bandwidth caps, including the Entertainment Consumers Association.

And if you do get suspended out of the blue? Best option is to just use another ISP -- even if Comcast isn't willing to support people who use tons of bandwidth, there will likely be another company that does. And if high-level broadband does become really widespread, it would be a bad business decision for Comcast as well to suspend large numbers of their userbase -- while there's always the chance that they could start charging a premium for more bandwidth, smaller companies will likely step up to fill any spaces that Comcast tries to screw over.

In short, right now, this isn't a problem. While in the future, Comcast may try to bring the bandwidth cap lower and lower, at this point, it doesn't effect enough people out there to worry, and even if you are affected, there are likely steps you can take to get around it, including going with another ISP if that's an option.