A lot of us pre-Burning Crusade players hold a warm place in our hearts for the Grim Guzzler, the bar in the middle of Blackrock Depths. It's a hangout for desperadoes and shady figures run by a leper gnome with a demonic bar wench and a metallic bouncer. Most of the patrons would usually kill you as soon as look at you, but as long as they're drunk and you don't bother them too much, they'll generally leave you alone. Of course, sometimes it's worth bothering them, since a few of the patrons and staff drop some pretty cool loot.

Despite this charming atmosphere, the Grim Guzzler is in the middle of a sprawling dungeon of hostile Dark Iron Dwarves, so ever since the Burning Crusade, people don't seem to go down there too often. That said, you might want to check it out in the next few days. There's a few new faces down at the bar since patch 2.4.3 went live, including an Arena gear vendor named Griz Gutshank, a Dark Iron Brewer who can't hold his brew, and a couple of goblin roadies setting up for a Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain concert.

Check out the gallery for a complete illustrated guide to the new faces and surprises at the Grim Guzzler, and maybe I'll see you there tonight for the Level 80 Elite Tauren Chieftain concert. Oh, and try the Sulfuron Slammer -- It's Plugger's newest specialty!

An apparently new Blizzard employee named 'Boxinabox' (uh, what?) has just announced that the PTR is back up and fully functional after a 'maintenace' period. Man, who the heck is this guy/gal?

The interesting part about this phase of the Test Realm is that Hallow's End is up for testing! We might get to see Horseman mounts if the models that have been dug out of the game files are any indication, but we won't really know until we actually see them drop. Maybe they've gotten rid of the oh-so-phallic Broom mounts this time around? We'll find out, won't we?

If you're interested in checking out and testing Hallow's End before it gets pulled, you ought to hurry and get on the PTR. Brewfest was pulled after only a few days, so your time may be limited.

Edit: Never mind. See you in 5-7 hours!

The Brewfest is currently live for testing on the PTR, and one of the biggest changes is the addition of yet another holiday specific boss, Coren Direbrew. Coren himself isn't completely new. He was also present in the Grim Guzzler last year, when he would give you a quest to deliver brew to the Brewfest and get an offhand tankard in return. This year, however, it appears he's a bit more surly. Instead of simply completing a quest, this time you need to fight him.

Luckily, the loot he drops is more than worth the hassle. Most of it is clones of the trinkets available for badges from G'eras, but there's also a couple other drops that look like a lot of fun. Overall, the loot should draw a lot of people out to Blackrock Depths to beat him up.

A list of his loot is coming up after the break.

You may remember that we announced that a Brewfest Kodo was hidden in the WoTLK Alpha files some time ago. With patch 2.4.3, the Kodo did in fact get into this year's Brewfest. The Brewfest is currently open for testing on the PTR, and you can see the Kodos for yourselves - but only on the Horde side.

That's right. Blizzard has added the Kodo mount, but not in the way many of us had hoped. The Ram mount is now available for purchase only on the Alliance side, and the Kodo mount only on the Horde side. Kisirani has confirmed that this is intended. She says that they came to this decision only after much deliberation, but it's likely staying, although she'll listen to constructive criticism. As you can imagine, this has not been well received.

Tipster Graffias pointed out an exciting find in the latest leaked Alpha files for WoTLK: An Icon for a Brewfest Kodo. You may recall that last year's Brewfest included a Ram mount that was purchasable with tickets by both sides, allowing the Horde very easy access to an Alliance mount with a few days of grinding for Brewfest Prize Tickets. Many Alliance weren't happy with this, annoyed that the Horde got such easy access to an Alliance mount without having to kill Baron Rivendare or a Troll a couple hundred times. Bornakk decided that the best way to answer this criticism would be by promising the Alliance that the Horde would be getting access to yet another previously alliance-only mount skin in the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Of course, Kisirani, being as awesome as she is, later said that we should have patience and things would work out in the end.

Listening to the words of the world designer seem to have paid off, as it looks like the Dwarves are going to turn the tables on the Goblins this year and steal some Kodos from them. I can finally fulfill my dream of owning my very own Kodo. My Night Elf Druid is from Kalimdor after all, and you would think there would be some Night Elves who decided to domesticate Kodos as beasts of burden too.

But really, as much as I am looking forward to grabbing myself a Kodo (and seeing a tiny Gnome riding around on a huge beast of burden), what's really exciting is this thought: If the Brewfest is in late September to early October, does that mean Blizzard is planning to give us WoTLK by September, Brewfest Kodo and all?

Zom over on the forums asks: what's your favorite WoW holiday? And the response is extra special because it's by Kisirani, who, you may know, is actually Blizzard's World Event Designer-- him showing up in your thread about holidays is kind of like God showing up on a thread about your favorite mountain range.

Kisirani asks specifically for constructive, reasoned posts, but c'mon, he's asking on the WoW forums. Fortunately, this site is not the WoW forums, and our comments are more than capable of giving constructive and reasoned.. well...

I kid! Tell the guy what your favorite WoW holiday is, whether it be the free epics of Hallow's End or the ticket grinding of Brewfest, and maybe the upcoming updates to Nobelgarden (we hope) will incorporate some of your constructive and well-reasoned ideas!

Thanks, Joshua!

I'd like to propose a toast to WoW for setting a new world record. Yahoo News Canada has announced the first Gamer's Edition of the Guinness Book of World Records is due out on March 11, 2008. World of Warcraft's distinction? The world's largest virtual beerfest.

Brewfest, in honor of Oktoberfest, is probably one of the most fun seasonal events in game. This event features festive food and beverages, along with fabulous rewards for participation. Every autumn, characters gather together from all over Azeroth to stoutly defend their treasured kegs from Dark Iron Dwarves. According to an informal Breakfast Topic poll, the most coveted prize for this event is the legendary (or at least epic) Brewfest Ram.

Since WoW is hands down the most popular MMORPG on the planet it will like pop up all over the the Gamers Guiness Book of World Records. For now, here's to Brewfest!

Okinos does a little trolling on the forums about holidays supposedly being boring (when actually, with the exception of no new content for Winter's Veil, they have been anything but), but at least something good did come out of the thread: not only does Drysc lay down a huge burn, but we're rewarded with a visit from Kisirani, part of Blizzard's world events team.

And she's got great news for those who love holidays-- all of the holiday events are scheduled to get a makeover, Hallow's End style. Darkmoon Faire is getting beefed up, as is "an older holiday" that is getting "a significant amount of punch" added to it. Chinese New Year, aka the Lunar Festival? Valentine's Day? Your guess is as good as ours.

Blizzard's team has to take time off, too, so it's not too surprising that there wasn't too much new content to go through this year (although the Clockwork Bots definitely make up for it, if only they'd work right). But it's definitely awesome to hear that there's more in store for holiday events around the realms.

There's a discussion going down on the forums about what many consider to be the most exciting part of MMO games, including World of Warcraft-- world events. As many drawbacks as there were to the AQ events, no one can argue that they didn't affect everyone in the World-- everyone was able to step up and help the war effort, and even though everyone didn't fit in Silithus, everyone came across some of the invaders that spread across the world. While the Naxx event was that way as well, we haven't really seen anything else on that scale even in this, the largest MMO ever. And let's not forget that since Burning Crusade was released, we're dealing with a lot more people-- there are huge amounts of the population who have never seen a world event yet.

Which makes it all the more likely that we will see a big one for Wrath of the Lich King. Bornakk says that while Blizzard realizes that a lot needs to go into creating a big world event, they've also learned a lot from Brewfest and the Hallow's End events about how to both tune the scale and get players involved. But Blizzard still wants to do a big one, and from what we heard at BlizzCon, they're going to come up with a reason for Alliance and Horde to head up to Northrend after Arthas.

My guess? Arthas is going to become a threat again-- he'll invade Undercity, or bomb Darnassus, or somehow attack our world. And for the first time that I can think of since the game has started, we're going to actually lose something-- an NPC, a city (at the very least, Dalaran) or something else. For all of the fighting going on in the world of Warcraft, it hasn't yet changed that much. And I think that with the next expansion, Blizzard is looking to have Arthas shake things up a bit.

Reader Sparticatina of Ysera sends us this excellent shot of a new take on Shatterspear Village (otherwise known as the dancing Troll village hidden away between Moonglade and Darkshore). In my humble opinion, the scenery is much improved by the addition of Gnomes, thanks to the Brewfest beer goggles!

Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing a copy to aroundazeroth@wowinsider.com, with as much or as little detail as you'd like to share with the world!

These images just keep making me laugh. Over the weekend, we posted pictures of people having fun with the Beerfest goggles around famous Azerothian NPCs, and although my original request of Illidan never panned out (he's not a humanoid, apparently, and thus not susceptible to the effects of beer goggles), you readers responded with tons of funny pictures featuring our fearless leaders as Gnomes and female Orcs.

So here they are all collected into a gallery, and if you have any more, feel free to drop us a note with links to them, and I'll add them in. Thanks to all the commenters who posted links for these pics: Nate S., myrlin, Haaken, erin, and s02.

Well unfortunately, it seems my request is not to be. As commenter so2 pointed out the other day, Illidan is not actually a humanoid, so he's not affected by the Beerfest goggles that turn everything into a Gnome (Alliance) or a female Orc (Horde). Bummer-- I really wanted to see Illidan as a tiny little Gnome guy.

However, as you can see above, Gruul is technically a humanoid. And thanks to reader Nate S., we've got a picture of Gruul in his lair, looking as attractive as a female Orc can look. I don't know how much Mudder's Milk you have to drink to make Gruul look that attractive, but it's got to be a whole lot of alcohol.

Of course, the other thing about Gruul is that as the fight goes on, he gets bigger, so I'm still curious to see if, while wearing the Gnome glasses, you could get a picture of the raid fighting a giant Gnome (heck, who needs the glasses-- Blizz, here's my official request for a giant Gnome instance boss in Northrend). And I think a lot more experimentation is needed with these goggles, anyway-- can we see Thrall as a Gnome or Bolivar Fordragon as a female Orc?

Update: Ask and ye shall receive. Thanks, myrlin!

So here's the thing. We've posted about these Brewfest goggles that 00hshiny is wearing above before-- they were purchasable during Brewfest (although, I just went by Org this morning, and the Brewfest ticket guy was still standing all by his lonesome outside the city, even though the Brewfest celebration had moved on), and when you wear them, you see everyone in the game as either Female Orcs (the Horde version) or little Gnomes, as in the picture above (Alliance version). And we've already seen the goggles used to hilarious effect.

But if you've been listening to the podcast, you'll know that there's one thing I haven't seen yet, and that I can't wait to see it. Someone, somewhere, please wear the Gnome goggles, and go down Illidan. I'm a Horde player, so I just can't do it, but surely there's some Alliance player out there who had some Brewfest fun in between raiding the Black Temple, and surely they can take the goggles on an Illidan run, and record the hilarious video results. I don't know what I can put on this for a bounty, but you tell me-- prizes? A promise to write about something of your choice on the blog? A callout on the podcast? Someone please go to see Illidan with the Gnome goggles on, and send us the FRAPS of it-- I'm just not prepared for how incredibly awesome that would be.

Update: Aww, that's a bummer. Looks like Illidan don't play that game, homey. Looks like the dream is lost forever. Oh well. Thanks anyway, so2!

Bored waiting for your character to copy over to the 2.3 PTR? Episode 7 of the WoW Insider Show is now available online over at WoW Radio for your listening pleasure. WoW Radio's Turpster, WoW Insider's Matthew Rossi and I sat down last Saturday and gave our listeners insight, discussion, and hopefully a little bit of humor regarding the following posts:

• The 2.3 PTR patch notes: Of course we had to discuss the upcoming patch.
• Forum Post of the Day: The fight to enter Zul'Aman: "One does not merely walk into the Ghostlands."
• WoW Moviewatch: Four wheels of Fury!: You can hear me do the "lawgiva" yell.
• Dalaran might be Alliance-only: Although Turpster disagrees.
• The sad state of BG healing: When a Warlock tops the healing charts, you know we're all in trouble.
• Got your ram yet? Our Brewfest wrapup.

Plus, we talk at length about leveling the same class over and over again, Paladin viability with both DPS and tanking, and how Turpster is a master of WoW-related comedy. It's a good time, so give it a listen, won't you?

And don't forget that we do this live on WoW Radio every Saturday afternoon at 3:30pm EST or 8:30pm GMT. This weekend, Turpster won't actually be around (he's going to Totalbiscuit's wedding-- Grats, TB and Eriyanna!), but as always, we'll have WoW Insider folks on with WoW Radio folks, and the best WoW insight and commentary outside of, well, this very site.