Papa's got a brand new blog. If papa were our favorite World of Warcraft database, that is. Wowhead recently announced a new feature on their site to coincide with the release of the Wrath of the Lich KIng, a blog dedicated to our favorite game. The blog will be written by the people behind Wowhead, to serve as a sneak peek into the people behind the game and the site. Malgayne writes that they'll "also be posting theorycrafting essays, weekly discussion topics, WoW news and maybe even a hardware review or two."

This is great news for everyone as Wowhead just keeps on getting better (kind of like, ahem, a certain World of Warcraft blog), and a better Wowhead is always a better gaming experience for everyone. You can always visit the blog page or subscribe to it through the RSS feed. There isn't much on it for now -- it's just the announcement post -- but expect the spot to fill up with some excellent reading material.

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.

... mushroom, mushroom. So why have we just bombed you with this tired yet perversely persistent earworm? Because like the proverbial mushroom, WoW Insider reader Badger has kinda grown on us, unanimously capturing the enthusiastic accolades of the WI staff when we decided to feature a WI reader/commenter on 15 Minutes of Fame. We discovered that fellow WI bloggers keep their eyes peeled for Badger comments on their posts because he's warm, funny, thoughtful ... All the traits that make other readers (and us!) want to pause to engage in a little World of Warchat.

So Badger, this is your 15 Minutes of Fame – but not before we carve out a few seconds for the other readers our staff felt deserve a WoW Insider shout-out:

• Angus
• Manatank
• Tchernobyl
• J Parris
• Heilig
  

Thanks, guys, and thanks to all our readers who help make WoW Insider a responsive, congenial community rather than a mere gaming information dump. We're glad you're reading -- and we're glad you're joining the conversation, too.

Just when I think Wowhead is feature-complete, they go and add something that never even occurred to me. This time around it's animated models in their 3D model viewer (high-quality Java version only). So if you can't manage to bag that elusive Squashling, at least you can see what it looks like, in full motion (be sure to click Java, if it isn't selected already). So far, animations are available for pets, mounts, player models, and NPCs, but items are coming soon (Terestrian's Stranglestaff, anyone?). Not only that, but they're already working on expansions for what sorts of animations are shown. Currently it just shows "idling" behavior; in the future, you should see a lot more, up to and including "/dance" (for player models) and casting animations.

I'm really excited about this (especially with my main computer in the shop, leaving me unable to play WoW at the moment). It lets me gaze at all sorts of interesting things:

• Raid bosses I'm never going to see
• Strange new mounts
• Awesome small pets
• Character models in any gear you want (using the compare tool)

And the Flying Carpet. It will be mine, oh yes. What are some of your favorite models?

As the beta winds down, Ask a Beta Tester becomes a little more infrequent, but as long as we have questions, we will answer. Let's start with Rob's question...

Are they planning to put in recipes for green items between 350-375 to make it easier to grind up professions? Or should i just suck it up and make (obsolete) blue/purple items to level up.

Many professions start with new recipes at 350 skill in Northrend, and some of them at 360. Nobody starts at 375. 360-375 is usually taken up by 'end-game' items so you won't have to grind those out to skill up before Northrend. I recommend checking Wowhead to see where your particular profession starts out.

Locke asked...

I know there's the Wrath Gate cinematic and so on, have you come across or know any other cinematic events like this, or was this the only one? I'm sure there has to be in game scripted events. Thanks.

Wowhead keeps adding new features, I know. But this is a big one. Last night, while most of us were busy watching the vice-presidential debate, they launched a fairly sophisticated tool for comparing items or sets of items. Basically, you can add any item or set in the database, and group them up however you want (by dragging items between groups), and then compare groups against each other to see what stats you gain and lose on.

There are tons of additional features to this tool, and it might be worth reading the instructions to see all of what you can do. Some things I particularly like:

• You can add stat weighting scales, to see (an estimation of) how good the item is overall for your class and spec. Click the scores to toggle the display format; I like the percentage display particularly, which shows the "best" group as 100% and everything else in terms of that.
• The "gains" row shows you in short what's different between your groups, by subtracting out all shared stats.
• All item listings on the site now feature checkboxes that you can use to quickly compare items.
• Each group has an option to view in 3D, so you can now finally use Wowhead as your dressing room: just create a group of items you want to look at, click the little triangle on the top bar of the group, and select "View in 3D."
• You can set one group as your "focus" by clicking the little eye icon, which shows all stats relative to that group.

I will definitely be making use of this in the future; it's much easier than figuring it out in your head or making a spreadsheet.

According to what I'm told is an official Blizzard ad on Wowhead's home page, we now have a release date for Wrath of the Lich King: November 13th, 2008. That should put an end to rumors that it won't be coming out this year, and it gives us just a touch under two months to get all our affairs in order and prepare to enter the frozen north. I can't find any official confirmation of this date, but Skosiris (Wowhead's lead developer) confirmed that this is a legitimate advertisement from Blizzard.

Update: Confirmed on the official site.

Update 2: Collector's Edition!

To celebrate being able to break this exclusive news, Wowhead is holding contests for the next week. From Monday through Friday, two LK beta keys are being raffled off each day, and the rest of the competition will be announced next weekend. Maybe you can win a beta key and help get the game a little more ready for shipping; a lot of testing and changes are still required. I'm quite surprised they're committing to a firm release date this far out, actually, but it's nice to be able to mark my calendar. And this should take some of the buzz away from Warhammer Online's release this week. Who's up for a midnight release pilgrimage?

To recap, the expansion will feature the following major features:

• The continent of Northrend
• The Death Knight class
• Inscription, a new profession (actually will be available in the 3.0.2 patch, which is now on the PTR)
• New raids and dungeons. All raids will be available in 10- and 25-player versions, and the first one will be a retooled Naxxramas.
• Wintergrasp, a non-instanced outdoor PvP zone with siege vehicles and destructible buildings (and a raid boss)
• Level cap raised to 80, with new spells and talents for all classes

I've been looking around for something exactly like this -- while Kaliban's Class Loot is a great resource for figuring out what kind of loot to dress in right before the endgame, and our gearing for Karazhan guides are a great resource for good drops and pieces around that level (including the rep sets you can get for each class and spec), the next biggest question to answer is "what comes after that?" And Gear Wishlist, a site made and sent to us by Darrell Anderson, tries to answer exactly that question.

After putting in your character and realm, you get a list of all the gear you've got equipped, matched up against a list of all the gear available at the item level you're looking at (you can customize exactly where the item levels come from, if there's a site whose estimations of the gear you value more), with yours highlighted. So basically, you get an up and down list of where to go from the gear you've got, and you can easily see where it all comes from and what kinds of stats it gives.

Of course, this is still more of a guideline -- just because gear appears above yours on this list doesn't mean that it's better than yours for your class and spec. And attainability is a big factor as well -- if you're not in a raiding guild, your time might be better spent grinding rep rather than trying to suffer through with PuGs. But as an overview of the gear available to you, Gear Wishlist works great. Hopefully the site will stay up under our linkage, and if it doesn't, check back in a few days to see if it's slowed down.

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

If you've ever spent any time sitting in trade chat, you could probably make a list of some of the most popular enchants. Requested frequently, any enchanter possessing the the knowledge to imbue a weapon or piece of armor with the proper stats stands to make a fair amount of gold.

For example, a healer seeking Major Healing, or a meleer seeking Mongoose, will know the materials, and gather them. Each time they replace their respective weapons, back into trade they will go to request the enchant.

Today, Insider Trader presents a list of some of the most requested enchants with information about how to obtain them so that you can offer them to friends, guildmates, and your server.

It is by no means a complete list, but it will get you off to a shining start and provide you with quite a to-do list. Check out the comments section for helpful details as well.

Drop rate data was gathered from the Armory, and Blizzard uses ranges such as Very Low (1-2%). This is narrowed down with data from Wowhead where appropriate, but keep in mind that some bind on pick-up recipes can only be seen by enchanters, and Wowhead cannot filter out that data, making their estimate much lower than the actual drop rate.

In the next couple of weeks, I'll be working on the faction recipes series, focusing on enchanting, so stay tuned.

I can't remember if we've posted about the WoW Gem Finder or not, but the last gem list I posted about has gone missing, so if you've never heard of this one, it's new to you. WoW Gem Finder is a quick web tool that you can to quickly find exactly the gem you're looking for -- just choose the colors, attributes, and/or abilities you want from the checklist on the side, and it'll narrow down exactly the gem you want and where to get it. And all the gems link to Wowhead anyway, so even if the little description isn't enough for you, you can go searching for it elsewhere as well.

Pretty great resource for anyone (like me) just starting to pick up epic gear on their latest character and looking into where the gems are coming from. One thing players might still need help with is when to put which gems on which gear (most people wouldn't throw epic gems in gear you get at 61, I'd think, and I personally usually don't bother with anything but vendor gems until I get an actual epic), but that may be all outside the ken of this finder. As a tool to help you find exactly the gem you want, it's a good one.

Wowhead has put up an announcement this afternoon that the beta key contest they were running has been cancelled. The announcement tells us that the distribution of the keys were exploited. Though there is no official word on what exactly the exploitation was, there is some unconfirmed talk about the beta keys being ebayed.

This is most unfortunate for those wishing to participate. Malgayne, the "Voice of Wowhead," does go on to say however that the remaining prizes will be given away using a different method soon. We'll get any more news up on this as soon as it becomes available.

It's just one contest after another for the good people at Wowhead. They just wrapped up their Olympics contest for some Wrath beta keys. Not to be outdone by themselves, their newest contest is giving away WWI goodie bag cards, which means a Wrath beta invite and a Tyrael pet for each of 20 winners. And the grand prize is a FigurePrint for one lucky competitor.

So what do you have to do for these fabulous prizes? For today and the next three days after (that's August 21, 22, 23, and 24), at 10 AM pacific time (1 PM Eastern), Wowhead is going to post five screenshots in the contest thread, without telling you what they are screenshots of. Your task is to identify them all; the first five people to correctly identify all the pictures each day will get a WWI card. Send your responses to contest@wowhead.com, with the Wowhead URLs, in order, of the things in the screenshots. You must list all five URLs, and no extras.

On the fifth day of the contest (August 25), the FigurePrint competition will be revealed. And European readers will be pleased to note that these prizes work for both US and EU accounts.

The first round of screenshots should be up in about fifteen minutes; keep an eye on the forum thread.

There is a certain party, a regular emailer to us among our readers, who believes that we here at WoW Insider take a little too long at the start of our posts to get to the actual point of each story, so in this one, I'll just get right down to it: Blizzard needs to put Auction House information on the Armory.

I've been on the grind to the 5000g for my epic flying mount lately, and I've been playing the Auction House like a demon: calculating, buying, selling, and crafting my way to as much gold as I can throw together. And while Auctioneer has definitely helped, the best way I've found to track prices and make sure I get the most for my time in the AH is just to see the prices themselves -- no average price calculated by Auctioneer is worth enough as seeing the real thing. And that's where Blizzard comes in -- while there are a few sites that attempt to track prices with various methods, they have actual, constant access to the prices on every server. And they have a great place to put them: on the Armory.

The item pages on the Armory right now are practically empty -- besides some vendor and reagent information, there's almost nothing there (especially compared to, say, Wowhead). Giving player access to AH information would pull them into the game even when they couldn't play, not to mention let some of Blizzard's most talented web programmers -- their fans -- at data that they could do tons of great stuff with. Want a text alert when your favorite mats drop in price, or when there's room on the AH to finally sell off those Elixirs of Agility you've got? By passing out AH info to the Armory, Blizzard could give fans access to the data needed to make their own great tools, not only leaving Blizzard free to work on actual development, but giving us Auction House haunters all the access we need to track prices and have that much more fun playing the AH.

The Olympics are on both in Azeroth and in real life right now. And Wowhead has gotten into the spirit of the games: they're offering users the chance to win one of five lovely Wrath of the Lich King beta keys! What do you have to do for a chance to get your hands on one? Simply go to the contest thread in the Wowhead forums, and post your idea for an Olympics-themed achievement. An example given is "High Dive: Fall 65 yards or more into water, without suffering any fall damage."

Winners will be chosen randomly from the thread, one per day for the next five days (starting tomorrow). A few caveats:

• You have to have a US WoW account to use the beta key (sorry, European readers).
• Only one entry per person – you can put in multiple ideas if you want, but just put them in one post. This will not raise your chances of winning.
• Achievements must have an Olympic theme.
• Only entries go in the contest thread.
• Don't post on multiple Wowhead accounts, or the folks at Wowhead will feed you to Magmadar.
• Be nice – don't steal other posters' ideas.
• Be creative; spammy entries will be deleted.

That said, go forth and compete! Good luck.

In the comments thread on the post yesterday regarding Wowhead's new pet talent calculators, many of you seemed somewhat misinformed and accused the calculator of being buggy. To set the record straight, here are some fun facts about pets and pet talents in the current Wrath beta:

• The +damage/+health/+armor modifiers have been removed from pet families. Instead, a pet's modifiers depend on which of the three pet talent trees it has: Ferocity, Cunning, or Tenacity. However, Blizzard will be implementing pet-family-specific abilities.
• Hunters get one pet talent point at level 20, and one every four levels thereafter.
• The total number of pet talent points available at level 80 is 16, unless you are a Beast Mastery Hunter with the 51-point talent Beast Mastery, in which case you get an additional five points, for 21 total.
• Each successive tier requires three points per previous tier to unlock (compare to five points for player talents). The exception is single-point talents such as Charge or any of the tier 5 talents, which require five points per previous tier, according to their tooltips; the exception to this exception is Boar's Speed.
• This means that the tier 5 talents are only available to BM hunters, since they require 20 points to unlock (again according to their tooltips), and any given pet can have at most one of them at a time.
• The last two points are based on how the tooltips read. However, this is not how they're currently implemented in-game; in the beta right now, All talents require three points per previous tier to unlock, which means non-BM hunters can get them as well. So there is a discrepancy between how the tooltips read and how it actually works when you go to spend the points. I'm guessing the tooltips are correct, since that would keep the tier 5 talents BM-only, and prevent hunters from getting more than one tier 5 talent.
• Update: The tooltips are incorrect. Ghostclaw confirms that all tiers require three points per previous tier, which means non-BM hunters can get the tier 5 talents.
  

All of these facts are confirmed by sources in the beta. Of course, it is beta, and any of this is very subject to change, but that's the way things stand right now. By the way, how amusing is it that moths will be Ferocity pets? Ahhh, run! Ferocious moth!

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.