What was going on in World of Warcraft this time last year? Back in the Day looks into the past of WoW Insider and brings back posts notable, controversial and sometimes humorous reflecting the state of the game one year ago this week.

For the week of January 27 - February 2, 2007:

The big news in the third week of TBC was E-bay's announcement: they de-listed all the gold sellers. Not that that stopped the black market for in-game gold sold for real life cash, but just today Blizzard struck another blow in the unending battle: they used the U.S. courts to shut out a major player in the gold selling industry from doing business on the Blizzard servers. The dance continues.

On the official forums, there was a mixture of apprehension about how classes were falling into their new roles and speculation about the nature of the post-60 raid game. One article addressed both these issues when it brought together the concerns of the community about Karazhan. Complaints included trash mobs in the zone being too difficult, bosses being too tough on melee classes, Nightbane's fear unfair to Horde and itemization out of line with the difficulty of the encounter.

Nowadays, the trash has been nerfed repeatedly, some bosses are still tough on melee classes, all Priests have Fear Ward, but a nerfed version making the Nightbane encounter difficult for both factions and the debate rages on whether itemization is good or not, but really, it depends on your class (hint: don't get a Priest started on the subject.)

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting druids and those who group with them. This week John Patricelli, sometimes known as the Big Bear Butt Blogger, starts his series on leveling a new Druid from 1st level all the way to 70th.

Before I begin my series on leveling your new Druid from 1st through 70th levels, I'm going to start with some of the things you can do to prepare.

Why not just leap right on into level 1? My reasoning is simple, just like me. When you have been watching Druids claw face as bears or cats, or as a new player you read about the description of the class and the shapechanging capabilities Druids enjoy, you might just expect to walk in and start doing the same yourself right from the start. The promise of the class is the fun of shifting from one form to another, depending on your playstyle.

Well, when you start your new Druid at level 1, you won't be clawing faces. Instead, you will be leveling as a caster... a ranged DPS caster for levels 1 - 10, and likely on towards 20. Just as Hunters don't get the ability to tame a pet until level 10, Druids do not get the chance to learn their first form until the Bear quest chain becomes available at level 10.

If, as you were sitting at the character creation screen, you were thinking you were going to be a kitty, all up in the face of the bad guys right from the start, it can be a bit of a let down. Especially if you don't care for playing a caster class in the first place.

Hopefully, however, by knowing how to set yourself up in advance with the in-game Options, useful User interfaces and Addons, you'll find yourself leveling up as a caster painlessly, and may even come to enjoy the versatility of some of the Druid's powerful casting abilities.

While the focus of this series of articles will be to help guide a brand new player into the fun of playing a Druid, hopefully there will also be some suggestions that an experienced player trying the Druid for the first time will find useful.

The patch hit on Tuesday morning, and Tuesday afternoon, I began my usual cycle of addon laziness-- instead of actually updating my addons, I just checked "load out-of-date addons" setting myself up for trouble down the road, I'm sure.

But while I'll be having addon problems for a while (at least until the next patch-- I'll probably finally fix everything right before 2.3 breaks them all again), you don't need to. Kaydeethree has put together a terrific guide to fixing your addons after 2.2, with links to addons that have updated, addons that haven't updated, and a few great tips on how to update your macros as well.

It seems like KD3 is keeping an eye on addons as they update as well, so the thread will probably be updated accordingly. If, unlike me, you're motivated enough to keep your addons as up to date as possible (so that they all, y'know, actually work instead of throwing error messages at you every few seconds), then KD3's guide should help.

This is one AddOn that I'd recommend to just about everyone. ItemRack lets you construct sets of equipment, and allows you to switch them based on hotkeys, events, or menu activation. For example, on my Priest, I have a heal set, a solo set (pictured), and a fire resistance set, which I use ItemRack's menu to switch between, although I should probably set hotkeys (it's also got plugins for FuBar and Titan Bar). I also have a Plaguelands set, which consists of my Argent Dawn trinket, that gets auto-equipped whenever I enter the PL, and a mount set, which has my boots with spurs, that gets auto-equipped when I mount up.