If you haven't read part one of the Thrall saga, you should probably do so. If you have read it, here's a quick recap of what went down so far: Thrall is the son of Durotan, former chieftain of the Frostwolves, who refused to drink the Blood of Mannoroth and was killed because he called Gul'dan a jerk. Aedalas Blackmoore, a drunkard with a lot of power, kept Thrall alive and raised him to be a tool to be used to gather more power for himself. Thrall made friends with Teretha Foxton in his days at Blackmoore's Durnholde Keep, and when Thrall escaped Durnholde many years later, Blackmoore cut off Taretha's head and threw it at the freshly-named Warchief of the New Horde. Thrall rejected this oh-so-kind gift and killed Blackmoore. If you need the details that go in between those notes, well, part one is just over there. Let's move on to the Third War and beyond, shall we?

This stunning fist (geeky pun intended, of course) is wielded by the Warchief at the top of Hellfire Citadel. And you've got to fell him (after fighting through his clan) to get it.

Name: The Bladefist
Type: Epic Main Hand Fist
Damage/Speed: 152-283 / 2.60 (83.7 DPS)
Abilities:

• Chance on Hit: Increases your haste rating by 180 for 10 seconds.
• At level 70, that means an increase in speed of ~17% when it procs, which according to reports, is fairly often. (Procs per minute involves a lot of math, and regular readers will know I'm terrible at getting math right, but from what I understand, this thing hits at 3 PPM, halfway between Crusader (1), and Lifestealing (6). So pretty often, but not every time.)
• Also, I'm told the Mongoose enchant can stack with this ability, which means if you've got both going, it's a lot of slashy slashy and stabby stabby (technical terms).
• Unfortunately, this baby is Unique (not to mention Main Hand), so no, you can't dual wield them like Kargath does.

How to Get It: To answer that, we have to go back a little bit in Warcraft Lore. Kargath Bladefist wasn't always warchief of the Shattered Hand clan, and he wasn't always known as the Bladefist. When he reached the level of grunt, the dude cut off his own hand, and replaced it with this weapon. And anyone badass enough to do that should definitely be Warchief, so he rose through the ranks and took over Shattered Halls. There's more to it than that (maybe we'll see a KYL someday on him), but that's what this weapon is all about.

And you know taking it away from him is not going to be an easy task. You've got to storm into Shattered Halls (which means you've got to get the key, which is a nice quest chain in itself), and you've got to do it on Heroic mode. Make your way through the Gauntlet, past the stupid Ogre (I'm just kidding, he's awesome), and all those damn assassins (they are not), and then topple the Warchief himself. Pull this bad boy from his wrist (it drops at around 5%), and it's yours. Impressive, no?

Getting Rid of It: I don't know why I ever decided to include this section. Why would you want to get rid of any of this phat loot? A vendor will give you 10g 46s 29c for it, and it will disenchant into a Void Crystal.

Blizzard is rolling out new hardware for several US realms this Thursday, and the process of transferring the realms means - you guessed it, extensive downtime.  The migration will begin on Thursday at 12:01 AM PST and may last as long as 24 hours.  Those of you on effected realms will receive an extra day's credit to your account, which is, I suppose, better than nothing.  Following the migration, Blizzard plans to open character transfers from existing realms to new realms (yet to be opened) to further help with performance and overcrowding issues.

Realms transferring to new hardware are Archimonde, Dalaran, Khadgar, and Mal'Ganis.

Other affected realms include Aggramar, Andorhal, Anetheron, Burning Blade, Burning Legion, Dentarg, Duskwood, Earthen Ring, Eonar, Eredar, Executus, Gilneas, Gorefiend, Haomarush, Kargath, Laughing Skull, Lightning's Blade, Llane, Malygos, Scilla, Shadow Moon, Steamwheedle Cartel, Thunderhorn, Thunderlord, Turalyon, Ysera, Ysondre, and Zuluhed.  While these realms are not receiving a hardware upgrade, Tseric explains that current equipment configuration requires this.

Update: The schedule has been pushed back to Thursday.