Good Morning everyone. On this Tuesday morning, most of us can rest easy: Just a quick restart at 5 AM PDT, and we'll be good to get back in the game. There a few servers, however, that will have to deal with an extended maintenance period, lasting until 11 AM PDT. You can see the full list of those servers here.

For players on those servers, and those of us who can't sneak in some WoW time at school or work, I bring you the perfect solution: A roundup of some of the best news and analysis from the past week here at WoW Insider. Dig in, and keep it here throughout the day for more breaking news, guides, and analysis.

• Starting your day with a crossword puzzle can be both fun and mentally stimulating. How about giving this WoW-themed one a try?
• Here's a friendly reminder from Nexus Prince Haramad, just in case you forgot last week: be sure to get your gems for July!
• There are an amazing amount of actions that annoy Allison.
• Here's an interesting world first: A multiboxer makes Gladiator in the Arenas.
• If being Myspace friends with a Murloc isn't enough, how about buying your own?
• Blizzard COO Paul Sams is calling out Microsoft on the subject of PC gaming.
• Not only is the Blizzard Authenticator sold out, but some people who made it in under the wire are having trouble actually getting their order.
• Will we ever see the Scourge Invasion event again? Kisirani is hinting that we might finally get a return engagement.
• With tank shortages reaching critical levels almost everywhere, now's a good time to discuss how to build and keep a good tanking corps. Be sure to check part 2 as well.
• The 4th of July was this past week, and nothing says 4th of July like good old fashioned... copyright infringement?
• Is buying your way through tier 6 raid content an insult to those who work hard to take down bosses on their own, or is a win-win situation for rich casuals and guilds in need of reagent and repair money? Join the discussion.

If that's not enough for you, we have fresh Wrath of the Lich King and Worldwide Invitational news waiting after the break.

Good Tuesday morning, everyone. As we mentioned earlier, it's a regular maintenance day today. That means at least a good six hours of no WoW, from 5am PDT to 11am PDT. Between that, and those two little dirty things known as school and work, a lot of us aren't going to be able to play WoW for a bit. Luckily, we can still read about the game, right here on WoW Insider. Allow me to guide you through some of the best content of the past week.

As always, we're striving to bring you the best Wrath of the Lich King news and analysis on the web. Here's some of the hottest articles related to the upcoming expansion this week:

• What's that Kalgan? You're doing away with pure spell damage gear?
• Like DoTA? Then you may find a lot to love about WoW's next planned Battleground.
• Everyone's been asking for penguin pets for WotLK. It looks like Blizzard may be delivering.
• You've been rocking the achievements on your XBox 360, I'm sure, but now you might be able to do the same thing in WotLK.
• In the latest Hybrid Theory, Alex tells you why, as a Shadow Priest, he's being cautiously optimistic about WotLK.
• Zach talks about a refreshing change in the way we renew our DoTs.
• The Blizzcast delivered with more news and interviews with the developers about WoTLK. You can read our breakdown of it all here.
• In more minor but still awesome news department, you might want to rock your desktop with some new WoTLK wallpaper.
• Learn about one of the new enemy races, the Magnataur.
• It's not much, but it is something. Class Designer Koraa very cryptically hints that great things should be coming for Shamans.
• But seriously, how excited are you about this expansion?
• And how will badges work in WoTLK again?

Of course, even as we look forward to the expansion, we're still keeping an eye on what's current. For more news and analysis from around the World of Warcraft, check out these articles:

...and Bornakk looked upon the World (of Warcraft) in its seventh day and said: "Let there be maintenance." And so it was.

Bornakk posted on the General Discussion Forums this afternoon that there will be maintenance tomorrow on all realms from 3:00 a.m. PDT until 11:00 a.m. PDT. Additionally, the forums themselves will be undergoing maintenance from 5:00 a.m. PDT until 8:00 a.m. PDT. You will not be able to log in to the forums, but you will be able to read them.

Patch 2.4.2 was announced last week and is on the PTR right now. However, it is unlikely that the patch will come tomorrow. The PTR phase of minor patches almost always lasts two weeks. Of course with that said, I'm sure I'll be eating my words tomorrow as 2.4.2 goes live. We'll all just have to stay tuned and find out!

Yep, last week most realms had rolling restarts, which means that this week we have a regular maintenance. This week all US realms (which means AU realms, as well) will have a regularly scheduled maintenance period, starting at 5:00 AM PDT and ending at 11:00 AM PDT. Sure, on good weeks, the realms can come back up early, but it's just as common for them to come back up late. So for those of you who usually play during this period of time, my apologies -- maybe you can join me in my downtime hobby of re-playing the original StarCraft!

[Information via the login screen -- nope, there's nothing on the official site, or I'd link it]

Of course having the servers back online as scheduled was too good to be true. And at 12:09 PM PST, Blizzard announced that maintenance would be extended by an additional four hours in order to deal with issues arising from the patching process. Yes, that means you shouldn't expect to be online and playing before 4:00 PM PST 5:00 PM PST -- at least if we're optimistic enough to assume this will be the afternoon's only hiccup!

Update: Drysc, always trying to outdo me, posted an update by the time I clicked to post this. We are now looking at 5:00 PM PST.

Update 2: All realms should be online and accepting players as of 6:00 PM PST.

We've all had to do it time and time again -- the servers are down for regular or emergency or just plain unscheduled maintenance, and your evening plans are suddenly ruined. So what do you do about it? Spend the evening trying repeatedly to log on to your realm? Troll the forums? Switch to a different realm? Roll a new alt? Fire up a different game? Go out for dinner? Go outside and try to remember what the sun looks like? Or something else entirely?