Illidan screamed "You are not prepared!" to us all in the Burning Crusade. It turned out that most of us were, especially after the release of patch 3.0.2. Over the past eight days Allison, Zach, and I have looked at what it takes to get you prepared for Wrath of the Lich King.

Even if you haven't been preparing every day for the past week or so, you can still get caught up quickly and easily. In each of our guides we give you some tips that only take about 20 minutes or so in game. Everything from cleaning out your bank, to stocking up on food, potions, and stones, to making sure that you have enough money for your travels.

Take a look back at our preparation guide. Are you prepared?

• Preparing for Wrath Day 8 – Your bank
• Preparing for Wrath Day 7 – Eat, drink, and be merry
• Preparing for Wrath Day 6 – Have a nice night with some pots, stones, and oils
• Preparing for Wrath Day 5 – Dungeoneering and you
• Preparing for Wrath Day 4 – Addons for leveling
• Preparing for Wrath Day 3 – PvP like there's no tomorrow
  
• Preparing for Wrath Day 2 – The dying wallet
  
• Preparing for Wrath Day 1 – Get your act together
  

One of the questions frequently asked is which zone will you be leveling in first? A large majority of players will pick Borean Tundra or Howling Fjord.

Why not both?

Not to worry, there's a far easier way of getting from the Tundra to the Fjord and back again. You don't necessarily have to go back to your capital city zones and then transfer to a different zeppelin or boat. Our new walrusian friends the Tuskarr will be supplying the main modes of transportation with really big turtles. Those Goblin turtle mounts are no match for these behemoths.

These carrot powered turtles will shuttle players from Borean Tundra to Dragonblight where they can then hop off and switch turtles in order to resume their journey to Howling Fjord. Don't worry, trips are free.

Note that all of the Tuskarr ports have flight paths for both factions for easy access to and from.

I had a ton of fun on the servers last night running around and eating as many brains as I can. As I'm a huge fan of zombies in all their forms, Blizzard's world event hit the mark for me, and so, I've spent my every minute as a zombie plotting how the living undead just might take over the world. Here's a few tips for making sure the zombie apocalypse really does shake the world.

Strength in numbers: This one's obvious by now, but you need to be with other zombies to really do any damage. You can convert NPCs, but not very quickly unless they're low level, and low level zombies drop relatively fast. It's far better to convert players (usually by listening in for anyone who wants to be a zombie, and then inviting them to a zombie party off the beaten path). But the key is to wait until you've got a good group -- any zombies that go shambling off by themselves are going to get quickly overtaken by NPC guards or overzealous Paladins.

More tips after the break.

If you've been exploring your capital city, you may have noticed something new. Grandmaster's Training Dummies now hang out in the cities, casually waiting for enterprising player characters to come and beat them. (I don't judge their lifestyles, I'm just reporting the facts.) If you're looking at the picture on the right, you're correct in your keen observation -- the clever training dummies even carry the flag of your opposing faction.

The dummies are level 80, obviously in preparation for Wrath's release on November 13th. We were fortunate enough to get them in the content patch, but it does lead to a few questions. What are these masochistic constructions for? What is their purpose? Do they give you anything?

Dr. Boom in Netherstorm was a staple of Hunters', Warlocks' and Mages' theorycrafting. The analysts of the communities would park themselves on a crate, and fire away at the goblin. Using AddOns likes Recount, or combat log parsers like WWS, they'd leverage the information to draw conclusions about which damage rotations and talents yielded the best results.

Target Dummies fulfill the same role, but are a little more universally accessible. (Melee had problems with Dr. Boom, since they could find themselves getting blown up by adds.) They also have benefit of not being out in the field. While safe and protected in your capital city, you can fire away until you feel confident in the data you're seeing.

There's a caveat to the dummies, however. Some spells (like Siphon Life) don't seem to give accurate results. Also, since the dummies aren't the specific bosses you'll be fighting, you're not going to get the exact same numbers as you would against the real thing. They're intended, after all, characters to practice on, not simulate the actual fights.

Edit: As some commenters have pointed out, there are level 70 and 60 dummies to be had also, in the same general area as the level 80 versions.

Every Sunday (usually), Spiritual Guidance will offer practical insight for priests of the holy profession. Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of PlusHeal, a new healing community for all restorative classes. This week Matticus is going to light up a two-part Spiritual Guidance post about all the necessary and relevant information you need for patch 3.0.2!

Welcome to part 1! This post will cover all of the new Holy and Discipline talents that will be accessible when the patch becomes live. Not only that, I've offered up some suggestions on different builds to remain raid viable (at least to the rare few guilds that are still raiding). I've isolated 1 traditional build and have 2 experimental builds for you to toy with.

Reader Aaron Stacey wrote to tell us about a simple new script he's developed that allows him to play WoW more fluidly, despite having little fine dexterity control in his right hand. Since a spinal cord injury, he is only able to grasp and release his hand. Prior to developing this script, Aaron used to play only with his left hand using "an abundance of key binds and keyboard/mouse switching." He was restricted to caster classes because of the difficulty in moving and attacking at the same time.

Inspired by our Wii remote post and our treadmill post, Aaron came up with an ingenious idea that he hopes will help others with similar disabilities. The key is GlovePie, a piece of Windows freeware (donations welcome) originally written for virtual reality gloves, which allows you to play any game using any type of controller you like. GlovePie's website lists controllers like joysticks, gamepads, mice, keyboards, and Wiimotes, among a host of other hardware.

Find out how to do it yourself after the break.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the Rogue class. This week, we explore quality of life changes for Rogues in the upcoming expansion.

After playing The Burning Crusade for nearly two years now, most Rogues have gotten into their level 70 groove. They know where the poison vendors are in Shattrath and where to acquire some good leather gear. They know where to level up their lockpicking and the best way to organize reagents in their bags. However, all that is about to change.

Blizzard is implementing a ton of new simple changes to the Rogue class that are guaranteed to have many of us confused at first. I've tried to make this transition a little bit easier by outlining some of the differences between your time at 70 and the upcoming road to 80. Read on to find out what these changes mean to your daily Rogue lifestyle.

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about.

Last week, 15 Minutes of Fame visited with multiboxer Nixi of team Absolute Power-H of Archimonde to bring WoW Insider readers his 10-boxing strategy for Karazhan. This week, we'll step back for a look at Nixi's hardware setup, his top five tips for new multiboxers and a broader look at why he's a 'boxer.

Catch up with 10-boxing Karazhan Part 1, then join us after the break for an inside look at Nixi's 10-boxing team.

The new Recruit-A-Friend program has taken the World of Warcraft community by storm, perhaps more so in the dual- and multi-boxing circles. I'll admit that while I advocate enjoying the leveling process and experiencing the lore through quests and in-game events, once you've hit 70 a couple of times, the magic tends to wane. With the coming of Wrath of the Lich King, we've had some time to re-evaluate our WoW experience. For many of us, finishing up some alts has become a way to prepare for the expansion. I've had a number of alts since I started playing, but have only managed to ding two paladins and a rogue. Each time I play in a battleground I see a member of another class do something crazy cool and ponder rolling whatever class it is.

With the RAF program in full effect, I decided that dual-boxing with the 300% XP and Summon Friend ability would be the most efficient way to get my alts Wrath-ready. This How-To is specifically for players using Macs, but in essence many of the principles remain true for PC users.

I have a confession to make: I've been playing the AH pretty hard for a few weeks now (ever since I started grinding up to the 5000g for my epic, and yes I got it finally), and I've come up with a lot of good tips for you guys, but I've kept them to myself, because I was selfish and didn't want my sources of gold to dry up. But now, I've got pretty much all the gold I need, and I'm ready to bring these to the world. Lots of you will already know what I'm going to say here (some of you might even be angry that I'm telling everyone), but for those of you who haven't found these little holes in the AH, here you go.

First of all: level up your First Aid to 325 right now, because I've got three words for you: Heavy Netherweave Bandage. Think all that they'll do is heal you? Think again -- they vendor in the game for a whopping 6g per stack, so every time you log on your AH alt, the first thing you should do is run to the Auctioneer and buy up all the Netherweave cloth you can find for less than 3g -- crafted up into bandages, each stack of cloth is worth at least that, so anything you buy for less than 3g (I've seen it as low as 1g 50s -- people are throwing away money) is pure profit. This is the biggest moneymaker I've found (you don't make much per stack, but after you've "processed" a few hundred stacks, the money adds up), and it made me regret selling Netherweave for anything less than 3g before I figured this out.

Second big tip: don't ever buy anything on the weekends. Ever. Prices soar on the weekends, so much so that you'll often be able to take advantage of huge bargains during the week, and then turn around and craft or just resell those items on the weekends, when everyone else is playing. I know you really, really want that Primal Air on Sunday so you can finish off your profession leveling, but wait three days -- by Wednesday, all of the AH sellers will have seen their auctions expired and will be ready to lower the price.

I've been playing WoW, and writing for WoW Insider, for quite a while now. So it came as something of a surprise to me to learn that I could hearth, after a fashion, when my hearthstone was on cooldown. You see, on a post of mine a couple of weeks ago, someone introduced me to the concept of "ghetto hearthing": get in a group with any random person, zone into an instance, and drop group. 60 seconds or so later, you're automatically teleported back to your hearth point.

The beauty of this is that Stormwind and Orgrimmar both have instances in them, so it provides very easy travel from those cities back to Outland, for those trips to respec or check the AH. Anyway, when I finally understood that I could hearth back from Stormwind any time just by popping into the Stockade, I felt like a big noob for having waited out all those cooldowns for the past year or two.

Have you had any big noob moments recently?

Although at times contentious, the current recruitment promotion has certainly sped up leveling. The triple experience point bonus comes to mind first, but the ability to give levels at a rate of one per two gained is also a real boon. The rule is that the levels can be applied to a character lower than the givers current level, capped at level 60. Theoretically someone who has reached level 60 could donate enough levels to raise another character from 30-59* in a matter of minutes.

This new mechanic is pretty easy to use and potentially abuse. Málfurion of Wildhammer is not happy with the change. To quote "I just saw a Warlock go from level 31-59 in 10 seconds in front of my eyes... The new recruit a friend is bull > <.... NERF NERF NERF!" The post was met with some disbelief, but it clearly is a possibility. Some players indicated that they have something similar in mind. Abilene of Aegwynn believes that this practice ruins the game for some.

Lume the Mad has done the math (very thoroughly), and he's got the answer for Druids: the end healing burst of Lifebloom doesn't cause any threat at all, either for the caster or the recipient. He first pared the entire situation of casting Lifebloom down to its basic elements -- you've got a player who body pulls a mob, and a Druid healing them. He took out all possible reactive abilities that might cause threat, and then set up a situation where the Druid obtained threat, and cast LIfebloom on another player, with an opposing faction Shaman purging the spell early (so it could jump straight to the end heal), and the mob stayed on the Druid -- the big heal didn't cause threat for the recipient at all. Finally, Lum tested if the Druid was recieving aggro, and as you can see above, neither the Druid caster or the Warlock is affected by the end heal of Lifebloom -- just one point of damage can still pull the mob around.

There's been a lot of discussion about this already -- the HoT aspect of Lifebloom still does cause threat (for the Druid), and so you combine that with the fact that lots of people were testing under "unsecure" situations, and the whole thing got very confusing. But Lum's tests seem very clear: Druids can cast away knowing that they won't pull aggro with that burst of healing at the end of the spell.

[Thanks, Matticus!]

If you're like me, you're constantly refreshing your email box right now waiting for a beta invite. Also if you're like me, you'll probably get bored eventually and go find some Horde to kill in a Batteground. After all, taking out your aggression on Orcs is what it's all about. But after that PvP session, you'll probably go right back to checking.

There's a few key things you can do to constantly check your email and make sure you know when the beta key comes. Let's take a look at them.

Press F5

That's the magic refresh key. It works on all browsers, and is a throwback to the old days of computers.

Press Control-R or Apple-R

Does the same thing as F5.

Auto check your email every minute

Most email programs allow you to "grab" email off the server as often as every minute. This is how I have my clients setup, and it will more or less let you know as soon as you get an email.

Somehow I missed the memo that Blizzard was changing the minimap to include an upfront clock, alarm, and stopwatch. It's a pretty neat idea. My favorite part is that you can switch the clock to read local time. This adds to time management tools located in the account setting to limit play time.

As I've mentioned before, I live in Las Vegas. It's a strange place, with time dimensions similar to World of Warcraft. You have to look pretty hard to find a clock or a window in one of the casinos and the floors are like mazes that are designed to disorient you. Why? They want you to stay there and spend your money. As far as I know, WoW has always had a clock, but until yesterday, you had to hover your mouse over it to see the time. You can always look around the room. I don't know how many times I've checked the time and wondered where the time went. I found it nice tonight to have it right in front of me.