I don't like to call attention to trolls on the internet; I think they're vile little beasts who need to be put out old-school DnD style with a roll of a six sided die and a cast of a flaming arrow. But one thing in particular some trolls are doing has caught my attention: a fake WoW guild being as annoying as possible on the forums.

I won't name this guild's name, or tell you where they're from, since I don't need them tracking me down in game or getting a bigger head. What they do to annoy the frack out of everyone (and that was my obligatory Battlestar Galactica reference for the week) is pretty lame - they post updates to bosses they haven't killed. For instance, right now they're claiming they've downed Brutallus. They even have a clearly photoshopd kill picture to prove it. However they haven't, and if you look at their armory profiles no one in the guild is above Kara level gear.

This guild will go and post in progression threads, taking up page after page of space. Eventually these threads have to be closed since they become full, and new ones started. However the trolls are right there to start everything again. 99% of the people on the realm ignore them, however there is always the 1% that gives them the attention they desire.

What can be done about this?

I would hope that most of you have learned this lesson by now, but for those who came in late: there is currently no Wrath of the Lich King beta test going on. We've been getting a steady stream of tips about various scam sites, or questions along the lines of "is this invite I just got real?" No, that beta invite you got from "bl1zzard@yahoo.co.uk" is not real. Wrath is in alpha, company-internally, maybe. Trust me, I want in at least as bad as you do, but any invite you get to a Wrath beta right now, unless you work at Blizzard, is fake.

When the beta does start (as it surely will eventually), and if you're lucky enough to get a real invite, it will point to a site at blizzard.com, worldofwarcraft.com, or (for our European chums) wow-europe.com. It will not, for instance, point to therealblizzard.net. The scammers have gotten pretty good at building convincing-looking sites (as pictured), but check the URL and don't be fooled. Do not enter your WoW account name and/or password anywhere other than the log-in screen of the game, blizzard.com, worldofwarcraft.com, or wow-europe.com. Oh, and use Firefox.

Kupoccino sent us a tip earlier today about a video that's posted over on a German site about WotLK. In the video a level one Warrior walks up the throne of Arthas and purchases a sword from a stone – a sword that appears to be Frostmourne.

The video is a fake, and has graphics elements and game elements, such as the bags, that are indicative of a private server. Additionally Kuoccino points out to me in a later email that the steps are really benches from the Undercity, and that the throne is from the Undercity as well. I'm inclined to agree with him.

Normally I wouldn't post something like this, but it's a good example of how far people are willing to go to try to get a scoop on WotLK. Also, as Mike Schramm pointed out on the podcast this afternoon, now is about the time that we'll start to see more leaked WotLK information. The alpha is going on, and the beta is a few months away - this is prime time for leaks to happen.

Now of course, there is the remotest of remote possibilities that this video is real. If there is even a smidgen of truthiness in here, my hat is off to the person that got this.

If you've got any WotLK screenshots, real or fake, hop on over to our tip line and send away! We're always on the lookout for a good thing! We just reserve the right to laugh and cackle if you send us fakes.

Right now there is no WotLK beta, there is no chance you'll get in the alpha if you're not already in it, and there is no email that's going to be coming to your inbox anytime soon about it. But when it comes, it's going to make you one happy gamer. This is a very important thing for people to understand, especially with the flood of fake emails lately.

Blizzard will make an announcement on their forums and/or their homepage letting all of us know that WotLK beta invites are going out. The email that you'll get if you're lucky enough to get invited will be sent from an @blizzard.com address, will come through the blizzard.com servers (you can check the extended email headers in your email program to see this). The email will have tons of identifiable information in it that only points to blizzard.com or worldofwarcraft.com and nowhere else.

For a reference, let's that a look at what the Burning Crusade beta email looked like that I got back in 2006

Lane over on WoW LJ pointed us to this article about "Playing to Win" -- the article itself is actually about Street Fighter II, but as Lane points out, the concept could very easily be connected to World of Warcraft. I remember Turpster talking about this on our podcast as well a few weeks ago: playing for fun and playing to win are two completely different things, and the difference between them can put a lot of players at odds.

Players who "play to win" wonder why some folks in game try to play by "fictitious rules" -- why not do some arena matching, or why not jump on an opponent on a PvP server when they're almost dead from fighting a mob? If there's a mod that will let you "cheat" on a boss, or a macro that will let you target opponents in the arena, why not use it? But just as the person writing this article about scrubs sees those as "fake rules" (because the game doesn't actually keep you from doing those things seen as "cheap"), many players do see things like honor and discipline in the game.

In the end, it's each to his own -- we all play this game for different reasons, and not everyone does play to win: some play for fun, some play to relax, some play just because they want to follow those "fake rules" (and any others they come up with -- pacifist players, Arena masters, or naked trolls). Players play by their own rules all the time, but that's no reason at all to call them "scrubs."

Take this with a gigantic shaker full of salt, but a sketchy guild site host named Ejeet Networks claims to have received screenshots of the downloader for the Wrath of the Lich King alpha (watch out for the automatic music player on their site, too). Again, this means almost nothing-- even if the downloader is really out there in the wild, it hardly means the game is anywhere near done, or that anyone but Blizzard employees are still playing it at this point. But Ejeet says the DNS server for the WotLK beta is online and answering DNS resolution, and they claim that a "Swedish contact" sent them screenshots of the alpha downloader.

Personally, I call shenanigans-- their first screenshot says version .1, and then the Properties screen they have says version 2.0.3.70, so which is it? They also claim that since the Properties screen says "{c} 2004-2008 Blizzard Entertainment," that's proof that we'll see Wrath in 2008, but that's hardly true as well. I have no doubt that we'll see the beta in 2008, but I'd bet money we won't see the expansion itself until January 2009. I'd love to be wrong, but them's the breaks.

But I leave it up to you-- as much as I disagree, these could be proof that Blizzard has an expansion alpha up and running. Anyone else spot any other weirdness that could rule these out as fakes?

Thanks, Dan!

Another patch has gone up on the PTR, bringing new visions of a possible future for World of Warcraft players. We've read a lot of patch notes in our time, agonized over what nerfs might be coming to our class, and waited with great anticipation new features and dungeons. Once we even saw how to write patch notes of our own!

So now, imagine if you will, that you have the golden opportunity to design a future WoW patch, creatively entitled "Patch 2.U." You are now the temporary chief of the Blizzard Development team. You sit in your throne room and dictate what the contents of the next patch will be!... But only for about 5 minutes -- then you have to step down from your throne and put the chief's hat on the next person in line. Then that person gets to dictate the patch notes, making any changes they see fit.

Let's say you can choose 5 items for your own personal patch notes here; what changes or new features would be most important to you? If you see any changes from commenters above you which you absolutely can't abide, feel free to change them back. This will probably give us an example of the absolute chaos this game would be if players were actually in charge, but it could be pretty interesting. Be sure to check out the "Guide to Writing Fake Patch Notes," and then... patch away!

[Patch note funnies by Penny Arcade!]

Know why I love you guys? Because when you go too long without hearing new information about the next patch and expansion, you just go out there and make it up.

This video says it's by Fanatik, who you may remember has leaked some info about upcoming content before. This purports to be a video of the next expansion, situated in Northrend-- except that it's completely and totally fake. Some parts are better than others-- the last cinematic is ripped straight out of WC3, but the main screen looks OK, at least until you realize that it too is chopped together from the previous Warcraft game. Boubouille has a list over at MMO Champion of where everything in the video comes from, and it's all completely fake-- Fanatik didn't even create it.

Still, it would be nice to hear some official word from Blizzard about what's coming next, wouldn't it? Until then (probably around Blizzcon, if my instincts are correct), I guess we'll have to make do with this.

There are a few constants in World of Warcraft. Mages will pull aggro. People in the forums will complain about every class, build, area, and profession. And as patches draw closer, people will make fake patch notes. So normally I wouldn't even bother posting something like this (unless it was unusually entertaining). However, as our pal Boubouille points out, this particular set of fakes came out three days ago, and contains the names to the new Darkmoon cards. Those names were just posted today by Ommra (check out line 39 in the original of these patch notes, and compare to today's Blue Notes). Coincidence? Shenanigans? Probably something like that. But just in case, here's some patch notes that may or may not be real.

Again, there's no particular reason to think these are real aside from the fact that they seem to have had the names of the new Darkmoon cards early. Grain of salt, and all that. And if they are real, I will be very disappointed, because they contain a substantial Paladin healing nerf: Illumination cut to 50%. Illumination is a Paladin Holy talent that, for five points, gives a 100% chance to get a mana refund on heal crits. It's a big part of the reason why pallies are such efficient healers. While I agree that there are some discrepancies between Priest and Paladin healing at the moment, I do not think the solution is to nerf Paladins; buffing Priests would be far better in my book (and most Paladins would agree with me, I think).

To be sure, the patch notes do have some Priest changes, but they're along the typical lines of how Blizz has been dealing with Priests: give us tricks we really, really don't want and won't use (lolwell), and then keep buffing them to try to make us use them. Of course, they never buff them enough to make them actually good (with the exception of the 5% spirit boost on Improved Death Spirit of Redemption), so the net result is buffs to talents and skills we never use. This time around it's a mana cost reduction (33%) to Binding Heal and unspecified improvements to Circle of Terrible Healing. Sorry Blizz, still not going to use them. GG though. Well, notes after the cut at any rate. Even if these are fake, they're still somewhat interesting.

I don't know if you could call this "Guide to Writing Fake Patch Notes" hilarious, but I think it is at least chuckleworthy. Flibble of Draenor (the realm, not the shattered world) has put together a quick guide on how to trick sites exactly like this one into believing your patch notes. And in doing so, he hits upon some of Blizzard's more conspicuous quirks, i.e. that you should "at least try to glance at the Under Development page, so that you can convincingly lie about the things Blizzard convincingly lies about on their website."

He also notes that every patch includes at least one change to a Mage spell icon (well, there are just so many of them), adding "several new items and recipes" that don't really exist, and has (faked, of course) bugfixes that "preferentially affect the 0.1% of WoW players who make no contribution to society [and] live in mom's basement at age 37." See what I mean? Chuckleworthy.

Truth be told, I really like the way patch notes are written. I'm not sure who writes them (I doubt it's an actual dev, but it has to be someone associated with the dev team), but they are both formal and at the same time seem to have a lot of cool mystery and design behind them. Caydiem hit on this note to extremely comic effect with her fake patch notes (I like that the grass in enemy faction zones is "exceptionally green"), but even the real patch notes read like a kind of otherworldly poetry: "Cabal Zealots are now more threatening while under the effect of Shape of the Beast." To players who know what they're talking about, they import a very technical message. But for someone who doesn't know about that section of the game or the game itself, that's a pretty mysterious statement. As a student of audience and media, I find patch notes pretty fascinating.