I deleted four toons today. I know that Wrath of the Lich King is quite a ways off, but I wanted to be prepared. First of all, I wanted to ensure I had a character slot free for my Death Knight. Although I'm not sure I'll be leveling it all the way to 80, considering the jump start at Level 55, it's a much better leveling grind than the alts I deleted, the highest of which was a Level 40 Shaman. I sold all my Soulbound items, mailed all not-so-junk items to my wife's toons, and promptly hit the 'delete' button.

Deleting my toons wasn't as hard as I imagined it to be, the hardest part was getting rid of all the items I'd accumulated. I did this primarily as a way of cleaning house... after all, I hadn't been playing with my alts all that much and one or two were mere bank toons. I haven't deleted my Level 42 Tauren Hunter and Level 28 Blood Elf Rogue because I'm still considering leveling them (unlikely). Of course, what I'm really hoping for is for Blizzard to finally allow PvE to PvP transfers just so I can finally bring my Level 60 Hunter and Rogue over to my server. With two toons leveled to 70 on a PvP server, I think I've paid my dues. Whether or not that happens, I'll probably end up deleting those two toons anyway.

So there, I'm making space for my Death Knight. I needed more character space because I'm reserving some character names. When Wrath is finally released, there'll be a mad rush for cool Death Knight names and I don't want to be stuck with a lame one. In a way, I'm streamlining my character inventory the way Blizzard's cleaning up the game in the expansion. I guess conditioning my mind for a Death Knight has allowed me to remorselessly excise my alts. Are you doing anything drastic to prepare for Wrath?

I know, I know. It's too early to actually figure out how Death Knights will work in PvP. Humor me for a bit. The new class, with its juicy talents and abilities, even if they will get changed before Wrath of the Lich King hits the shelves, have got me really excited. They have some pretty cool spells and a new resource mechanic that promises to shake things up as far as gameplay is concerned. I'm not big on alts, and I play mostly on my main and a secondary toon that really needs more love, but I actually want to make a Death Knight. I'm not an alt-o-holic, but I think I'll be taking it all the way to Level 80.

Of course, while I tell all my friends that I'm finally making a toon I'll be happy to tank with, what I'm really thinking about is PvP. I had initially wanted to make a Death Knight class when the game was announced, Death Knights being my favorite Hero in Warcraft 3. I thought Warlocks were the going to be it, considering the Death Coil spell, but I ended up never making a Warlock at all. But now here's the real deal. Plate armor, badass Rune weapons, Deathchargers, and all things ooky, spooky, and vile. Sounds like a lot of fun to me.

I think everyone who's run an instance and a raid has been in this situation -- you wait all night for a Karazhan run, it fills, so you decide to go run a heroic or some other five man, and then a few minutes in, you get a whisper: "Someone left, and we need a healer! Are you still in?"

Sigh. An embarrassment of riches. So now what do you do: ditch your newfound 5man group for the raid you originally wanted, or stick with the group you signed on with, passing up the original raid? Neither way is very smooth -- either you disappoint the folks you're with, and look like an elitist raider, or you tell the raiders that you're already in a group and run the risk that they won't ask you again. So awkward -- it's like choosing a social circle in high school all over again.

Usually, the best course of action I've found is to cover yourself before you leave either group -- jump into LFG or ping the guild for a replacement before you leave anybody behind. Short of finding someone to fill in for your fill in, the next best option is probably to explain yourself well and promise help next time -- hopefully the group you're with will understand that raiding is fun and/or the raiders will understand that you couldn't wait and keep you on the list for next time. Any other ideas for getting out of an instance pinch like this?

A full Achievements database is now live on Wowhead's Wrath of the Lich King site. When first I heard about this, I said (as you may be saying to yourselves now) "big deal, other sites have had achievements lists for a few days now." But you owe it to yourself to go check this out. They've taken their time to do it right as only Wowhead can, and it looks great, with complete information on achievement chains, meta achievements, point values, and just about anything you might want. "Shop Smart. Shop Pet... Smart" is a good example – it lists every pet that's valid for the achievement, all 103 of them. Attention to detail for the win.

Blizzard has shown their usual flair in naming these things, too; my favorites include:

• Why? Because It's Red
• The Cake Is Not a Lie
• Bring Me the Head of... Oh Wait
• Make Love, Not Warcraft

The Achievements listing includes Feats of Strength, zero-point achievements that may be unachievable in the current game (like old honor system ranks), or at least unachievable by most people. Among these are several "server firsts", such as being the first on your server to reach level 80 with a given class, or the first to kill a given boss. It's nice to see that this information is going to be memorialized somewhere besides blogs and realm forums.

In other Wowhead news, talent calculators for the new Hunter pet talents are now available. Additionally, new weapons and armors now have 3D models viewable on the site (just click the "View in 3D" button on item pages), so you can check out what we'll all be seeing in a few short months. So far I haven't found anything that looks totally amazing, though I did come across something that looks rather like the walrus hat that Blizz seems to be fond of showing off in Death Knight promo pics.

This is one of the sillier articles that PC Gamer UK has probably ever written about massively multiplayer online games, but still, I enjoyed it. One of their writers went (only half seriously) looking for love in a few popular virtual worlds, and he found it, surprisingly enough, in Azeroth.

Neither EvE Online or City of Heroes were very helpful in the love-finding department -- despite finding a fetching young lady superheroine in CoH, the writer was a little disappointed to find out she was a he behind the keyboard. But WoW, as usual, provides the best of MMO experiences -- the writer finds some cute love in the Night Elf starting area.

Sure, it's silly (and probably not true -- just because someone says they're a Finnish college student means nothing at all online). But I found it strangely touching, the thought that a real human connection could be made in an online game. And isn't that why we play these in the first place?

[via WorldofWar.net]

I couldn't agree more with Mystic Chicanery -- despite the fact that most players consider the "level grind" to be the most boring part of the game, a stodgy run towards the much more interesting endgame, I've found that I tend to invest myself more in my character while actually leveling up, strangely enough, and it seems to me that endgame is the much more boring part of the equation. While leveling, you get a constant meter (literally) of how much your character is progressing, but after 70, progression becomes much more nebulous, and you have to do a lot more poking around for things like enchants and gems.

Of course, the main complaint with the level grind isn't doing it the first time, it's doing it again and again, and thankfully, as Mystic notes, will bring us ten brand new levels to roll through. But maybe I have a bad memory, because even when I do hit 70 with a character, going back to the beginning with a new class or a new faction is a new experience. And Wrathgoing through the same content a second time makes it faster and more interesting to me -- I already know where the hard quest targets are, and I can catch up on lore or secrets that I may have missed.

Each to their own, of course -- maybe you've already leveled all nine classes to 70 and couldn't imagine going back and running through Stranglethorn Vale or Hellfire Peninsula one more time. But I've found that I almost prefer the leveling "grind" -- it seems more core to me, improving the character constantly with an XP meter, than the current method at endgame of raiding your way through the instances for gear upgrades.

Yet Another Warlock Nerf has a terrific guide up to one of the most misused/underused pieces of gear in the game -- the PvP trinket. The cheapest version, Insignia of the Alliance/Horde is just over 2,500 Honor, so anyone can get a version of this (YAWN recommends the Rare version, which is powerful enough to be useful and cheap enough to spend honor on other things) and especially until many more specialized trinkets are available at endgame, it's a must have for anyone running PvP.

But when to use it is the question. Especially in 1v1, the best times to break out your trinket are when it will allow you to immediately avoid damage, so breaking it out for things like Sap or Polymorph (which don't actually cause damage to you) can be a waste of the cooldown. But things like Kidney Shot, Fear, and Frost Nova mean that more damage is incoming, so then is usually (there are, of course, exceptions) a good time to pop the trinket and escape the damage.

YAWN bravely goes out on a limb here and tries to provide some guidance for an activity that isn't very well governed by guidance (don't tell PvPers what they can't do!). Actions and rules are very, very situational, and so there sometimes will be times when you should trinket out of Sap, or spend your two minute cooldown on Death Coil. But as a starter guide to when to use and not use the trinket, it's a great read.

[via Resto4Life]

Continuing our series on Shaman talents in Wrath, we're going to talk today about Elemental Combat, and the new talents for it. One of the first things I notice comparing the current talent trees to the ones coming is the move of Elemental Devastation down to a 5 point talent, making it much friendlier for Enhancement Shamans to pick up (as was commented upon in our previous post on the subject) especially now that Nature's Guidance is gone from the Restoration tree. With the ability to guarantee a Lava Burst crit by using Flame Shock, you could theoretically keep your melee crit rate up for a very long time, and in so doing reduce the cost of your shocks significantly as well as keep Maelstrom Weapon stacked.

Which is very nice for enhancement shamans who want to spec into Elemental, yes, but what about for elemental shamans themselves? What talents will they be looking at?

Well, just for starters, let's talk about Paralysis.

By now you have surely heard of the new Achievements system set up for Wrath of the Lich King. While this will finally give collectors an extra incentive and reward, players are a bit worried about their bag space.

It was announced recently that non-combat pets and mounts would take up no bag space in Wrath, and instead, the item that currently houses the pet will serve to teach you a spell for summoning the pet, and then disappear.
While this is a huge weight off of the shoulders of many players, when reading through the current list of Achievements, one begins to wonder where all of their tabards, battleground tokens, badges, holiday items, epics, trinkets, and the like are going to go.

Although we don't have information regarding the storage of every item we'll soon be collecting, Tigole made the following statement:

Your bags will be ok. I promise. Pets, Mounts, Heroic Badges, BG Tokens are all getting storage space.

I wonder how badges and tokens are getting storage space. Surely, they cannot be turned into spells, and I don't have room for bags specifically dedicated to only one or the other, so I'm definitely interested to know what they have up their sleeves, and if any other collectible items will get similar treatment.

The introduction of runeforging to the Wrath Beta was a bit of surprise and slightly unexpected. Instead of rune swapping -- the idea of being able to change the nature and configuration of the runes on your runeblade -- Death Knights got a solid 2 Unholy, 2 Blood, and 2 Frost runes. Runeforging itself became a weapon enchantment system whereby Death Knights could enchant their weapon with various special procs and buffs for various situations.

There has as of yet been no sign of an ability to swap runes, and Jayde, aka Jadefury, recently asked if there were still plans for one. The short answer, according to blue poster Ghostcrawler, is no.

The long answer is perhaps a bit more complicated, and reinforces Blizzard's stated goals with the Death Knight class role and the new runeforging ability.

Zarhym, provoked by a pretty lame whine about two new Arenas and only one new BG in the next expansion, is expounding a little bit more on what Blizzard wants to do with World PvP and Lake Wintergrasp in Northrend. Ever since the zone was first announced, Blizzard has said they want to have it be the pinnacle of their world PvP experience, fixing all kinds of problems, from getting players involved to level imbalance to actual PvP rewards.

And Zarhym says it's still on track to do al that -- he specifically mentions that they've designed the battleground zone to supposedly be impervious to problems with realm imbalance, "trivial at the endgame," or "forgettable because of a lack of incentive." So if you hold a lot of faith in what Blizzard's working on, that would mean Wintergrasp is meant for 70s, has functionality that doesn't necessarily require a lot of players on both sides (siege vehicles come to mind), and will have an extensive rewards system (we've heard before that it may be token-based and equivalent to the level of current Arena gear).

If Blizzard is doing everything they promise to with Wintergrasp, it should be a sight to see for sure. A world PvP event that adds the permanency of the Auchindouin rewards with the mechanics of Halaa and the epic feeling of the old Southshore/Tarren Mill world PvP battles? We can't wait.

Wowhead recently went live with their database of all the Achievements currently in the Wrath beta. Among those Achievements is one for clearing each dungeon and raid currently in Wrath. Each Achievement lists its requirements for completion, so what does that mean? We now know the names of all the dungeon bosses (as well as a little from the raids)! Everything placed after the cut for those who want to avoid spoilers.

Hunter talents are out, and there's definitely a lot to say about them, both good and bad. While we have discussed some of the changes to the lower Survival tree, what we haven't touched on is all the new talents and the talent changes in other trees. If I was to sum it all up in one sentence, I'd say this: The 51 point talents look lackluster, but most of the rest is downright drool inducing.

Marksmanship's early tiers are now full of easily obtainable goodies for any Hunter, Survival's gained even more group and raid buff utility, and Beastmastery has even more amazing pet synergy.

There's a lot to cover, so we'll tackle it one tree at a time. First, we'll look at Marksmanship, which was once premiere Hunter tree, but has fallen a bit to Beastmastery in Burning Crusade. It's certainly seen some marked improvement for Wrath so far, and even if you don't plan to spec Marksmanship, you'll at least want to know about the first few tier talents, as you'll probably want to grab many of them anyway.

I've had my eye on Goldskin for quite a while now. He produced some machinima that has yet to be featured, but is really interesting and unique. That's why I'm not surprised by Azeroth Walk, his latest work, which involves stop motion, a frame by frame animation technique.

Created for GameTV-fr, you can really tell that a lot of work went into the production of this short piece. He took over 2500 pictures, but used only a little over 1900 of them. When you consider all the sifting through, preparing of images, and positioning the model viewed characters, it took 35 hours of work from start to finish!

If you have any suggestions for WoW Moviewatch, you can mail them to us at machinima AT wowinsider DOT com.

Previously on Moviewatch ...

Every Wednesday, Encrypted Text explores issues affecting Rogues and those who group with them. This week Jason Harper, the new Rogue feature blogger, discusses the state of the Rogue class, effects of the 2.4.3 patch and the news from the Wrath beta.

I think I've got a pretty big job ahead of me as the new Rogue columnist here at WoW Insider. Sitting here, freshly unwrapped, I know I'll have to both balance the need to fairly represent "real" issues and not get too lost in "rah-rah-rogue" points of view. I'll need you, dear reader, to keep me honest and call-out the unintentional errors or oversights. We're a community and I absolutely want to know what you are thinking, what you love or hate and what you'd like to see me bring to this column that represent your needs.

Like a "do-not-toast-in-the-wrapper" warning on your box of PopTarts, I'd like to point out that any references I make to skills or talents in the Wrath beta should be taken with a grain of salt since they are subject to change at any time.