Violet_helix asks a good question over on WoW Ladies LJ -- is there a way in the official UI to form up guild alliances. And unfortunately, as the commenters answer her, there is not. Guilds who want to raid together just have to kind of do it.

The only little workaround that is available, of course, is the chat channels -- those can be created and even moderated in an ad-hoc way (though I believe that they can't be given permanent moderators, which means that if someone leaves the channel, they could lose moderation privledges). But even if a guild alliance is able to keep up a chat channel and keep it moderated, they can't do things like leave a message of the day, or store ingame information on guilds or members as regular guilds can. There is an addon called Guild Alliance that will do lots of that stuff, but there's nothing official.

Should there be an ingame UI for creating alliances? We've been promised more backend guild-based content (like guild battlegrounds and even guild housing), and if Blizzard does choose to heavily update the guild system, there could be a lot of benefit to guilds aligning. Not to mention with the 10/25 main raiding split in the expansion, it's not unexpected that we'll have smaller guilds who join up with each other for the big raids rather than huge guilds with big raiding teams. On the other hand, the practice isn't so widespread at this point -- there may not be enough alliances out there to start officially recognizing them within the game world anyway.

You may already be aware that SK Gaming has a listing of the top arena teams in the US, Europe, and Korea, all ranked against one another. Now SK Gaming has added another feature to this listing, which shows both the most "popular setups for high ranked teams" and the "average rating for popular setups." You can see very clearly the top five class combinations in each category of the arenas, from 5-vs-5 to 2-vs-2, all right above their regular listing of the top teams in each category.

I originally found this new interface via World of Raids, and they have their own summary of the most popular class setups. However, clicking through some of the options on SK Gaming's site, you can clearly see it's not just a simple matter of having the right classes in order to win. In 5-vs-5 it seems that, for the most part, the warrior and the paladin provide the backbone of a good group, while after that, you need a balance of some hybrid healing and dps classes.

In 3-vs-3 and 2-vs-2, however, you can find many groups doing very well without any warriors or paladins at all. The traditional roles of "tank, healing, damage" we see in PvE obviously don't always apply in the arena, where the balance of your team's abilities working together is what matters most. Druids, rogues, and warlocks in particular seem to shine much more here than in 5-vs-5.

So if you're a serious arena junkie, and you like analyzing these things, head on over and see what you make of these various class combinations. As always, our regular Blood Sport column can help you, as V'Ming has lots of information about how the classes are balanced together as well.

Reader Kevin G (thanks!) sent along a tip about EBGames having some fun on their listing for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. As you can see (we've saved the listing for posterity above), the entry jokes about the listed 11/03/08 release date being unofficial, and determined by overpowered warlocks rolling 20 sided dice. The price, listed at $40, is also made up, and they say that if the price jumps by more than $1,000, they're all headed off to the Caribbean. Considering how many copies Burning Crusade sold this year, yeah, no kidding.

It's nice to see that EB is up for having a little fun with an unannounced release date. Good for them.