The Armory was updated with achievement and statistic tracking last week to accompany the new game features introducted in patch 3.0.2, along with tools to compare your achievements and stats to other players on your realm. There was a lot of concern over someone the things displayed out in the open for all to see such as the Wealth stat. How much gold you've had, how much you have, things like that. Players felt it made them into targets of sorts, figuring hackers, scammers and phishing sites would focus fire a little more. Heck, some people were just plain uncomfortable with other players seeing their gold stores.

It looks like Blizzard actually agrees in this case. If they don't agree, at least they were feeling a little sympathy and wanted to calm some nerves. The Wealth category has been removed completely, and while you can still check up on other achievements and stats, you don't get a free look into someone's money bags anymore. I don't know that how much gold you have on display actually had an effect on who scammers target or not, but it's not like it was important information anyway and you might as well be more safe than sorry. Some stats are fun to see and compare, but I don't know that gold is one of those stats.

Welcome back to The Queue, WoW Insider's daily Q&A column where the WoW Insider team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft.

It's Wednesday, which I've determined is the worst day of the week ever, so let's skip any delays today and jump right into the Q&A. If you disagree that Wednesday is the worst, you are wrong. Wrong wrong wrong. As wrong as you could possibly be. Just sayin'.

Robsato asked...

I recently got my warrior to level 71 and I really miss my riding crop especially since my main is a pally going at normal speed feels really slow. Is there a way to get my 10% speed increase back?

It's the weekend after Thanksgiving, the family has all left, there's nothing but turkey leftovers to eat, and you hit level 80 last week, and you're just waiting for your guild to level up so you can start the endgame. What is there to do on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon? Find all of the Well Read books -- WoWWiki has the guide I've been looking for ever since I first got excited about this achievement. I count 43 in total, and they've got a list of all the books you need and where you can find them for reading.

The vast majority of the books can be found in Scholomance and the Scarlet Monastery, so a run through both of those instances (you can easily solo both at 80) will get you many of the books you need. From there it's time to travel the world -- Brill, Southshore, the Eastvale Logging Camp, Duskwood, and Booty Bay, and a few other places, depending on your faction (Alliance seems to have a little bit of an advantage there, as Stormwind and Orgrimmar have nice libraries. There are a few good books in Undercity, but the Orcs and Tauren aren't much for book learning, apparently).

Seems totally doable in a quick afternoon, and while you won't really get anything but the 10 achievement points (and probably a nice chance to pick up some more of the old Azeroth explorer achievement), why else would you do this, other than to brag about it. Whenever anyone argues that you don't know your Azeroth lore, you can just point them to your Armory page, and tell them to check the part about you being Well Read.

Reader Aaron V., creator of the Path of a Hero site that we linked to a while back, sent us an email to say that the site is better than ever. It's jumped up to 3700 users (probably more since he told us that), all the EU realms are now supported, and there are many more social updates built into the interface. Not only can you search the entire database with a new Ubersearch, but users can now comment on journal entries and even send messages to each other. Aaron tells us that stability is better than ever, and he says he's been getting a lot of good feedback, too -- people have been telling him that they wish the site had been around since they were level 1.

Cool to see that it's working so well. The site lets you upload screenshots of your character, and then pulls Armory data (including gems, enchants, and set item bonuses) out into the page as well. We'll have to see, too, if Aaron is able to implement the new Achievement and stat info -- maybe you'll be able to chart your character's gold or achievements over time.

Finally, Aaron says that he is working on support for alts and thinking about setting up "path of a guild"-type features, so you can track not only a character's progress, but a guild's progress as well. Definitely a cool idea to look back at where you were in the game, and see all of the things you've earned and achieved so far.

Blizzard has updated the Armory with a new Wrath of the Lich King theme, and achievements and stat information for each player. It's very cool -- not only can you check out what each player has done so far (including all and recent achievements, and all of the statistics available ingame), but you can also compare players to each other, both in the stats and achievements pages, and you even get, as you can see above, the totals for everything, so you can see just how "achieved" you are.

Very cool. We've been expecting this one since patch 3.0.2 came out (if it's in the game, why wouldn't it be in the Armory?) but obviously other priorities rose to the top before now. Blizzard did a great job with it, though -- they can all head off to the holiday weekend now without worrying about the update.

And then, when they get back, maybe we can haz an official API?

Update: Just noticed that Blizzard also has a news feed on the main page when you log in that tells you about goings on and realm firsts for your character specifically, from who's downed the heroics recently to the first characters to 80 on your own realm. I wonder what they'll report on when all the firsts have been taken, but we'll have to see -- that might be an interesting feed to follow (they provide RSS for it as well).

Apparently there have been some mistakes made in the realm-first achievements being given out. You've probably seen these (Blizzard apparently broadcasts them across the realms) -- when someone hits level 80 or finishes a profession first, they attain a feat of strength achievement. They don't get the original titles, but they do get credit for getting their first.

But on a few realms, Blizzard ended up giving some of the awards to multiple players, resulting in the ingame mail you see above. We're not sure if it's because they all hit within a certain time period, or whether Blizzard's servers weren't working correctly, but as you can see, they say the issue is fixed for now. If you did rush to be the first on a server, you can be satisfied that you're the only one.

Thanks, Penny!

"You love Rat." "You love Chicken." "You love Rabbit." I have to admit, before the achievements came to the game, I was a critter-killer -- I usually ended the lives of any critters I came across, because this is war and the world is no place for them. But since achievements appeared, I've gone around loving every little animal I could -- I haven't gone at To All the Squirrels I've Loved Before with a plan, just emoted towards everything I found.

But Random Ravings isn't quite as random -- they've got a terrific list of where to find every single critter you need. Only two are actually in Northrend (I thought there was more), and the rest seem to be in muliple places around the world, so it doesn't seem too bad at all. The hardest might be the wild parrot -- that one seems to be only in Un'Goro, but brave the dinos down there, find the bird, and you're all set.

Nice list. Anyone ready to head up to Borean Tundra and just grab the last two? BBR says they're also working on a list of all the books for the reading achievement -- can't wait to see (and eventually run around and do) that one either.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

With Wrath nearly in our hands, it's time for us as officers to go over a mental checklist and make sure we're adequately prepared for this expansion. (Please no Illidan jokes -- poor Arthas has no catchphrase and it only makes him angrier.)

I can't possibly tell you what should be on that checklist -- it all depends on the type of guild you run and what your guild's goals are. You do have goals, right?

However, here are three questions that you should start thinking about -- if you haven't already . . .

1. How will you distribute BOE raid drops?

Epic BOE raid drops aren't new. World bosses in Outland had their loot changed to BOE to encourage guilds to go after them. But it's been a long time since most guilds have had to deal with them on a regular basis -- not since Molten Core, if memory serves. They weren't too difficult to manage back then. With 40 people tagging along, odds are someone in the raid wanted whatever dropped. If not, the drops were all class-specific, so the number of people who could request them was relatively small.

The realms, they're back to workin'. After you've download patch 3.0.3, which is only 20 megs, you can log into the game and play around with some of the new features. We are not expecting very many realm problems tonight, since this was mainly a bug patch which fixed several outstanding issues.

However if there are connection problems tonight, we'll keep you updated with all the latest news from Blizzard.

So as long as you're able to get in and play, you'll quickly notice that the best part of the realms being up is that everyone and their cousin Niko is sporting the new Hallow's End title, "the Hallowed." If you weren't able to finish off everything necessary to get the achievement and accompanying title you'll need to wait until next year.

Of course you could always start worshiping the Ori. I hear they're pretty hallowed as well.

This week, Keyra of Farstriders has a question about a group that's been a little left out of the expansion excitement so far: midlevel folks. Here's what she is asking you, our readers:

With all of the focus on Wrath, there seems to be a conspicuous absence toward those who are of lower-to-mid level and it's beginning to become irritating. Not everyone is level 65+! Some of us are still below level 40 and many of us are just starting out. So, here's my question: What can we who are mid-level expect to see from the expansion, if anything? Is it even worth the trouble to purchase since we can't benefit from the higher-level quests, items and what-not? And what would you suggest to speed our leveling so that we may enjoy what Wrath has to offer?

Keyra

The fact is that most of the marquee features in the expansion pack are, yes, aimed at the higher levels. And most of the things that will affect lowbies -- Inscription, the faster leveling, and achievements, are already in the game anyway.

So there are two questions here: if you're pre-60, why should you care about Wrath? Or should you at all? And Keyra also sounds like she wants leveling suggestions. My suggestion? Do quests, and lots of them. Do every quest in your log, in order, and then when you're out, go to the next town over and do all of those. The rewards will be good, it'll go as fast as leveling goes (even faster, now that Blizzard has added more XP to the mix all the way to 70), and you'll always have a clear goal: just do the next quest in your log. You might have to skip over group quests, but just keep doing quests and eventually you'll be 70 before you know it.

What say you to Keyra, readers? And if you have a question you'd like to ask the (frankly, rowdy but loveable) readers of WoW Insider, just send it along ot ask AT wowinsider dot com, and you might see it up here next week.

Previously on Ask WoW Insider...

You knew this was coming, but I'm impressed with how it's done over on WoW-Achievements.com. With points to track and players to compare, it was inevitable that we'd have a site show up to track achievements, and here it is. While the Armory itself doesn't show individual achievements (yet), they've apparently come up with a way to figure out a number per player, and there's a worldwide player list (or at least a list of the 53, 901 characters they surveyed somehow). You can also post a pic of your achievement info, and they'll update it on the site. There's no way to see your individual stats yet, but if and when Blizzard adds that functionality to the Armory, we'll probably see a couple of sites show up like this, that allow you to do more with achievements and tracking them than the official UI does.

Of course, the Xbox 360 is the gold standard for achievements at this point -- while other MMOs and WoW have used the mechanic in their own way, Microsoft has built achievements into Xbox 360 profiles available online to anyone, so that's where most of the great web tools are right now. But the one that stands out for me, that I'd love to see replicated in World of Warcraft, is 360voice.com -- it basically creates a blog of what you've been up to on the Xbox that presents your activity in a readable, fun format. With Achievements build into the Armory, something like that could be easily used to power a timeline of your character, and let your friends see from day to day where you've been and what you've done. Lots of very cool ideas to develop here -- hopefully Blizzard will release Achievement info in an API sooner rather than later.

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

PvP is a controversial topic in the Warcraft community. For some, it's the only reason they play. With so little PvP content in the game compared to patch after patch of mostly PvE content, they can sometimes feel neglected. Others have zero interest in PvP and resent when their class gets nerfed in the name of competitive balance. As for me, I enjoy PvE far more overall, but I want PvP to be just as fun and rewarding. I'm hopeful that Blizzard will be able to achieve a tighter class balance this time around, even though historical evidence and even Blizzard's own words point to the contrary.

So what about PvP guilds? Why aren't there more of them? This week, one reader wants to know if a PvP guild can survive despite Warcraft's raid-focused endgame.

Dear Scott,

I recently went looking through your past articles, and I'm in need of some help. I'm looking to start my own guild -- specifically, a PvP guild. I know, that seems quite contrary to the majority of guild related issues you discuss, but a guild is a guild, right?

Hallow's End went away today at 4am server time, just as sneakily as it arrived. The end of the Seasonal Event brought to a close about a month of the Scarlet Monastery being just about the most popular instance in the game. Some players ended the event completing the Meta-Achievement while others, like myself, fell short. With a mere twenty-eight minutes to go, I rounded up a bunch of guildies and used up about five summons to try and complete Sinister Calling.

While I ended up missing the Hallowed Helm, two Squashling pets dropped out of five tries, which was a pretty good deal for the short time we had. We ran out of time on the last summon... as my guildie completed the quest to call out the Headless Horseman, he was able to utter the challenge but nothing came out from the grave. In fact, as the clock struck precisely at 4pm, the giant pumpkin disappeared, leaving us stupefied.

It was a fun Hallow's End event, even if it did get rudely interrupted by zombies. I hope that unlike me, most of you got what you needed from the event. The mount would've been nice, but I suppose there's always next year. By that time, I hope Blizzard will update the encounter for Level 80 with matching new loot. The Headless Horseman has about 12 months to level up.

Happy Halloween, everybody! The World Event happening today IRL is the basis of our favorite game's Hallow's End festivities. This is the day when we are officially allowed to knock on strangers' doors and hope their Innkeeper will give us some treats. This is also when we can dress up as, well... anything, really, and not have anybody look at us funny. This is actually a great opportunity to do a little bit of cosplay even if you're not really into that kind of thing. I mean, why not dress up as your favorite WoW character? In fact, some people thought that was such a great idea they decided to make Warcraft costumes for everybody.

What do you have planned for this Halloween? Will you be dressing up as a Warlock in Tier 5? Or maybe an Orc with the Arcanite Ripper? If you do plan on dressing up as somebody -- or something -- from Warcraft, don't forget to send in your pictures! While some of you might still have some last minute Hallow's End Achievements to pursue, I hope you get it early today so you can go out for what usually is a fun-filled night in many places. This is one of the few times that I'd actually recommend not playing the game for a little while. I mean, RL tricky treats and flimsy masks have got to be on everyone's agenda, right? Ending the day not plastered on Dos Ogris might be an Achievement for some, while I certainly hope nobody gets Out With It outside the game today. Whatever you have planned for Halloween, we at WoW Insider hope you have a blast!

I have to admit, I've been giving Arathi Basin short shrift lately -- while I'm having a great time hitting all the solo achievements (just got my Delicious Chocolate Cake the other day, and Mr. Pinchy is my next goal), battlegrounds have fallen by the wayside on my play schedule. But AB is a great time, and if you've recently found your way back in there, Slorkuz happens to be an expert on AB winning -- when a player wonders how to win AB in a tournament setting, Slork shows up a wall of text on how to walk away with at least 3 nodes.

Of course, Zach has already written extensive tips on how to win in there, but Slorkuz has a few tricks of his own -- rather than the usual 5-5-5 group, he recommends a 4-3-3-3-2 setup, with a group of four holding down what he says is the most important node, the Blacksmith. It's the closest point to all of the nodes, so if you group has to move fast, that's the place to be. The other three person groups hold down the other nodes, with an extra three person group and a duo moving back and forth and defending as necessary. And in a tournament setting, there are lots of things you can do to make the setup even stronger -- give mount buffs to the moving players, communicate back and forth to match the numbers, and make good use of CC when possible.

Definitely food for thought (and probably enough to pull me back into AB for a few fights this weekend -- to get Make Love, Not Warcraft, if nothing else). When Wrath actually releases, Wintergrasp will probably be the place to be, and I'm just plain tired of WSG and all the shenanigans in AV, but AB still seems to have some fun in it.