Cooking is a secondary tradeskill that most players should strongly consider learning, and maximizing. The buffs that many of the foods award can be quite helpful, and aside from damage buffs, there are also healing buffs, tank buffs, and food for hunter and warlock pets, among other yummy treats. If you rely on purchasing the foods from the auction house, you'll find your consumables bill soaring upward.

You can also make a profit from cooking, especially regarding pet food. Because many players are stubborn and won't learn any of the secondary skills, you can sell your dishes for a hefty price.

Still, if you don't fall madly in love with cooking, searching high and low for the latest recipe and farming to your favorite tunes, then you might have some trouble and confusion when trying to reach 375. This week, Insider Trader will take an in-depth look at the easiest path to cooking 375, avoiding fishing altogether. Although they go hand-in-hand, they can be done separately, and many cooks do not want to become fishermen.

Patch 2.4 breathes new life into World PvP with a pair of new daily quests in Terokkar Forest and Nagrand. The Nagrand quest involves killing enemy players in Halaa and has made control of the center island, at least on PvP servers, more volatile. There are two versions of the Halaa PvP daily quest, one for the Alliance which can be obtained from Lakoor in Telaar; and the other for the Horde which can be obtained from Karrtog in Garadar. The quest objective is simple: kill 10 enemy players in Halaa. Unless I'm mistaken, it is the first and only player kill quest in World of Warcraft, making it something of a milestone and -- I hope -- a sneak peek into Lake Wintergrasp.

The Alliance quest In Defense of Halaa enlists the aid of players to defend or recapture Halaa, which appears to be a Draenei outpost due to its architecture. The Horde equivalent, Enemies, Old and New, asks players to aid in the fight against the Draenei and their new allies. The quest becomes available to players at Level 66 and rewards 179 Honor points, 12,650 experience, 4 Gold 50 Silver, and 500 Reputation with the respective factions of Kurenai or the Mag'har. At Level 70, the quest awards 209 Honor, 11 Gold 99 Silver, and 500 Reputation every time the quest is completed. The reputation gain is substantial and is a nice bonus.

The quest can be completed while in a Raid group, and it's highly recommended to do it as one big group because the quest objective of slaying ten enemy players will only count if a member of your group made the killing blow. Unlike normal kill quests, tagging targets isn't important, only the killing blow. Being part of a big group increases the chances that the kill will count. Like normal kill quests, however, you have to be in the general vicinity of the Honorable Kill in order for it to count. As with all Honorable Kills within the vicinity of Halaa, players receive a Halaa Battle Token. This quest makes it easier to accumulate the 100 tokens required for one of the best Resilience gems in the game, the Sublime Mystic Dawnstone. It is also shareable, so players don't need to run back to Garadar or Telaar if there's already an ongoing battle. Note that the quest isn't to capture Halaa, so players can simply engage in battle, get kills and leave. For more information about the PvP daily quest in Halaa, be sure to check out the guide I wrote up. The same benefits apply to capturing the island, such as the availability of vendors and the zone-wide buff so players may consider staying at the island long enough to convert it, anyway. Remember that the controlling faction also controls the adjacent Graveyard, giving them an advantage during battles on the island. Assaulting players will typically have to run from the Graveyard directly North of Halaa, so players who die should prepared to run a long way.

As exciting as Patch 2.4 has been so far, most of the attention has been on the all-new content on the Isle of Quel'danas. WoW Insider has put together a comprehensive walkthrough of all the daily and Shattered Sun Offensive-related quests to help guide you so you can coast your way to Shattered Sun rep and earn more than a few Gold along the way. Among the few additions that didn't get as much of the spotlight but deserve mention are the new PvP daily quests, so players can spice up their PvP routine beyond the usual daily Battleground quest. Now even hardcore PvP enthusiasts can earn some Gold on the side while killing enemies. How cool is that?

Click on the links after the jump to find out more about the new PvP dailies that exploded with Patch 2.4.

Patch 2.4 is finally going live, and with all of the new content, it will be pretty overwhelming when you first log on and attempt to decide what you want to do.

With new loot, new quests, and new areas to explore, there will be plenty to keep you busy!

05. Regarding your User Interface:
The default UI is changing, so along with updating and reconfiguring add-ons, you should learn more about the changes you're going to need to make.

04. For the explorer:
If you like to be prepared, check out our coverage of the maps for Sunwell Isle. If you'd rather dive right in and be surprised, then check out your own map of the Eastern Kingdoms. The little island at the very top is your new destination! Either way, the easiest way to get there is from the Ironforge (Alliance) or Silvermoon City (Horde) Flightmaster.

For the rest of the countdown, hop through the break!

If world PvP or looking at pretty pictures is your thing, you might want to head over to the main WoW site today, where Drysc has announced the posting of two new player submitted screen shot galleries showing world PvP action and Halaa fighting. It looks like some people had a lot of fun making these, and I have to admit, they've made me more nostalgic for the old Southshore-Tarren Mill fight days. Maybe I'll try heading out to Halaa and making some screen shots of my own. I've been meaning to get in some practice for Lake Wintergrasp anyhow, so this is as good a time as any!

How about the rest of you? Are these galleries inspiring you to go grab your sword and fight the Horde (Or grab your kitchen appliance and fight the Alliance, as the case may be)?

I was one of the lucky few that was able to copy my character and log onto the public test realm over the weekend. Playing more than I probably should have, I was able to check out all the new daily quests and snap screenshots of much of the new content. In the midst of my frenzied trek around Outland and the Isle of Quel'danas (the new zone that hosts the upcoming dungeons), I made certain to check out the two new PvP daily quests mentioned in the patch notes. These are not the new Battlegrounds Daily PvP quests that are being introduced with the same patch, but all new quest options for World PvP objectives.

First off, I headed to Allerian Stronghold in Terokkar Forest. Near the Spirit Shard vendor, I found a new NPC, Exorcist Sullivan, offering that zone's daily quest. The objective is simple enough, merely help in the capture of one of the Spirit Towers in the Bone Wastes. In return you'll be awarded some cash and honor: 11 gold, 99 silver and 209 honor, to be exact. While I haven't been able to check out the Horde version of the quest yet, I'd imagine the NPC should be easy to spot in Stonebreaker Hold, near Spirit Sage Gartok, the Horde Spirit Shard vendor.

Reader Ekrim sent us a tip to let us know that when all instances crashed on the Earthen Ring server over the weekend, Horde-led raids descended on to Stormwind and Ironforge. Word quickly got out to the Alliance and an epic battle ensued for the next hour until the entire server was brought down to fix the crashing problem. Not an unprecedented event, but certainly fun.

This reminds me of old school world PvP at Southshore/Tarren Mills (on my server). There was no goal or objective other than to overrun the enemy town before they overrun yours. It was pure, unadulterated, unmitigated fun. Blizzard experimented with structured world PvP in Silithus and Eastern Plaguelands, and then some more when they launched the Burning Crusade expansion, but they failed to capture the lawless, unpredictable quality of the good old days when we just did it ourselves.

Which brings up the topic at hand: why aren't we doing it ourselves anymore? Because of the lack of Honor, welfare epics or Arena rankings from the proceedings? When's the last time you've spontaneously joined in on a mass world PvP party for fun and not for profit?

Although this is a bit disappointing, it is hardly unexpected, and there are so many upcoming positive changes that it's hard to be a sad panda for long. Currently, the devs are focused on improving Alterac Valley for patch 2.3 and creating new content for WotLK, which will include an outdoor PvP zone, Lake Wintergrasp. Following in the wake of Halaa's undeniable success, this zone will boast siege warfare, and many other innovations in world PvP.

As for what the new battleground will be like? I'd still love to see an Aldor vs. Scryers battleground; and as much as we all love to see new content drop, we can at least try to satiate ourselves knowing that what we will be getting will continue to advance PvP as we know it. Now; a little less sad panda face please!

Blizzard has posted a helpful page of tips on how to run, in my opinion, the best setup of organized World PvP so far: Halaa, the conquerable city in Nagrand.

The tips are pretty straightforward: stick together (team-- where's my CS homies at?), do as much bombing as you can before heading into the town, and make sure, once you've liberated Halaa from its evil oppressors, that you stick around to keep control and defend against any counterattacks. One thing I like about Halaa is that the Wyverns make it super easy for even lower geared players to join the fight and make a real difference. Plus, the layout is done well, and I like, as we heard at BlizzCon, that Blizzard went with a pretty persistent reward-- it's no fun to conquer something just to lose it again in 5 minutes.

And Halaa, surely, will serve as a model for the next big noninstanced PvP zone coming in Wrath of the Lich King, Lake Wintergrasp. Blizzard hasn't actually designed the zone yet, but they did share their goals with us-- multiple targets and rewards, a persistent effect, and of course while Halaa doesn't have them, siege weapons will make an appearance as well.

So if you haven't tried Halaa yet, definitely check it out. From everything we've heard, this kind of thing is the future of where World PvP is headed.

For PvPers out there interested in the Mystic Dawnstone pattern from Halaa, a hotfix was applied yesterday which made it available at vendors in the city. Or, well, should have made it available. Reports from the European forums today suggest that the hotfix needs a hotfix, because the pattern still isn't spawning properly on EU realms. (No reports from US realms -- which I presume means everything is working as intended on US servers. But let us know if it's not!) Stay patient, everyone -- Blizzard is working on a fix.

[via MMO Champion]

The world PVP objectives were a nice addition in the Burning Crusade. Capturing objectives in Nagrand, Hellfire Peninsula, Zangarmarsh and Terokkar Forest provided minor buffs to everyone in the zone, as well as exchangable tokens for the capturers.

Yet today, at least on Magtheridon, barely anyone actually does the world PVP objectives. What went wrong? As best I can figure:

1. The rewards aren't good enough, at least for sustaining competition. As one of my guildies put it, "Woo, you get a graveyard in a zone you probably aren't doing anything in, or some marks for items that you don't care about."
2. Unless you're doing SSC and can afford to station a couple people outside to keep the graveyard, most level 70s aren't in the areas affected by world PVP, and thus have nothing to gain from the zone-wide buffs.
3. In a lot of cases, it's easier to get rewards simply by letting the opposing faction capture the towers/city/arena or what have you rather than actually holding the thing. "So you captured Halaa? Great! Now quick, lose it so we can take it back!"
4. Dedicated PVPers are probably spending all their time on arena teams, rather than farming in Outlands.
5. And, last but not least, that one level 70 in a guild with a name like "Huge PVPness" who spends hours in HFP or Zangarmarsh, constantly camping all of the objectives and pyroblasting anyone who comes near. Amazingly enough, no matter which faction you are on, this guy will always be on the other side and you will never have any 70s of your own to rescue you.

Other than increasing the rewards to attract more people and/or tying world PVP objectives into honor and arena points, I can't think of many ways to fix the world PVP situations. Currently on my server, there's little to no town raids and organized world PVP -- "world PVP" consists of ganking and the occasional hunter on roofs.

How is the state of world PVP on your server? Can you think of anything to make the world objectives more attractive?

World of Raids has a great preview of Nagrand -- covering both the gear you can get there and how to get it. The zone sounds to be a PvP playground -- though obtaining gear there will require both PvE and PvP work within the zone. The rewards are nice blues (with a single epic jewel) that seem to be not too difficult to obtain, at least not compared to current PvP gear standards. They are purchased with tokens, one type of token acquired from killing opponents in PvP within the zone (one Halaa battle token per kill) and the other type acquired by killing NPC opponents within the zone (Crystal Powder, which drops from NPCs, is turned in for Halaa research tokens). The gear itself costs between 20 to 40 of the battle tokens as well as 1 or 2 research tokens (requiring 20 to 40 Crystal Powder), with the epic costing 500 battle tokens. So I'd imagine that a few hours of PvP could well result in several pieces of gear, if you were after it.

To access buy gear and obtain the research tokens, your faction must have access to the neutral city of Halaa in the center of the zone. To do this, you must kill off all the guards and occupy the city -- a "bomb run" to slaughter the guards shown in the video above. Such fun!

Those wacky kids over at Curse have posted a few impressions of the World PVP options in the Burning Crusade on their forums. Being as the Alpha is supposed to be closed, we're not completely sure how Blizzard feels about that, but considering they haven't been entirely forthcoming with info about World PVP, these impressions are better than nothing.

There are three zones covered here, and while the first two, Hellfire Peninsula and Zangamar Marsh, don't sound much different from what we have now in Eastern Plaguelands (the only difference being that in the Marsh, holding control points grants you not only a buff but access to a midzone graveyard), the third, in Nagrand, sounds much more interesting. Halaa is an entire controllable city held by whatever faction has grabbed it lately, and not only are there, Curse says, NPCs inside to turn in tokens and quests, but outside, on the four bridges that act as access points to the inner island, you'll be able to find "Wyvern Posts" at which you can hire flying mounts to use as bombadiers. Not only that, but there are guards inside the city that fight with or against you. Now that sounds cool-- it's like a whole other battleground, but in an overworld zone.

Curse also mentions new rewards specifically for World PVP. Just as you can loot turn-in tokens from fallen players now in AV, there will be new tokens and purchaseable, zone-based buffs and items for World PVP rewards as well. There's also a few notes about Arena PVP, but I get the feeling that until we see some real maps for the setups Blizzard is planning, we won't have a good idea of what kind of strategic play they're looking for. Still, this is definitely more than we've ever heard about the new World PVP before, and it's great to see that Blizzard is trying to formalize and encourage the gigantic battles that used to be a part of World PVP in the past.