Extended Maintenance has begun, and it looks like a small patch has come with it. Patch 2.4.1 is less than 5 megabytes, and looks to mostly fix a few bugs with the combat log (including that annoying one where no settings were saved), sound, and shading, as well as a bug with Tranquilizing Shot. There might be more undocumented changes, of course, but we'll have to wait until the servers come up to see that.

Patch notes after the break!

I use a Mac as my production machine. I don't want to get this too much into a Mac v. PC war, so lets just leave it with this: I find I am more productive with my workflows in OS X, and I have the added bonus of not worrying too much about what nasties are included in my downloads. I've been drinking Apple Kool-Aid from a sippy cup for over 10 years, so for me playing WoW on the Mac isn't some life-altering decision. My PC is nothing more than a game/media conversion console. But this whole hacking thing is making me think seriously of playing WoW on the Mac full-time. Sure, I've had WoW sessions of a decent length on my Mac, but not complete PC abstinence. In full disclosure mode, I've worked in IT for over ten years, and many of those years with a dotted-line relationship helping out our Security group. So, I've got a decent understanding of How Not Do Stupid Things On Your PC.

Back in my EverQuest days, we had "hacking" problems, but usually those could be traced back to someone doing stupid with his or her account: they used a powerleveling service or gave their password to a brother or guildie who then did something bad. With WoW, though, it seems much more nefarious. Sure, you give your password away you don't have much of a leg to stand on; I'm not going to say anyone deserves anything, but you've got no moral right to get indignant. Am I just reacting to this with a "oh noes, the sky is falling!" paranoia. Maybe. But when you hear of guild websites getting hacked to install keyloggers, peripherals shipping with keyloggers/viruses installed, it's tough to blame the user. There are always two sides to every story, but I'm getting the feeling there are a lot more true innocents in this battle, including our own Amanda Dean.

Theflamecrow on WoW LJ provides us with our quarterly reminder: it's probably time to update your video card's drivers, if you haven't done it in a while.

If you're on a Mac, you don't need to worry about this (Software Update's got you covered, and the latest graphics update already helped your framerate). For PCs, Nvidia card drivers can get the latest version here, and ATI card owners can grab the latest files here. If you're not sure what kind of video card you've got installed, you can just follow along with this simple guide from the last big video card reminder, or one of the many other driver update guides available.

I should warn you: 99% of the time, updating your video card drivers will fix all kinds of problems-- it'll usually help your framerate, if it needs it, and it will often clear out problems with artifacts and other graphics glitches. But doing any system activity like updating drivers has the potential to harm your system, so always follow all instructions (like turning off all other programs and restarting the PC when asked) and, if possible, have a backup ready when you update. I've never had a system problem while updating graphics drivers, but if you're not careful, it could happen.

Ever since a few WoW patches ago, many of us Mac users have been, honestly, suffering with much lower framerates than we should be seeing, given the hardware we're on. Fortunately, it looks like the just-released 10.5.2 system update will give a lot of help in that department, along with many other system fixes. Tipster Jason went from 27.5 FPS to between 45 and 60 FPS on his iMac after installing 10.5.2 and the Leopard Graphics Update (which also just came out today and requires 10.5.2), and our own Adam Holisky went from 30 to 50 FPS on his own first-gen Intel iMac. I didn't have the presence of mind to test my WoW before updating, but it's certainly running silky smooth now on my MacBook Pro. Go now, good Leopard-using readers, and run your Software Updates (always a good idea to back up before major updates, though). Those of you who have updated, are you seeing performance benefits?

Now that we have 3D renditions of items on Wowhead.com, I've been playing with them a bit, and it really does give a completely different sense of what a particular item looks like. Since I'm on a Mac, I've never had a chance to play with the WoW Model Viewer before, and I imagine such a web-based version is pretty fresh and interesting for many other players as well.

Since there are so very many new 3D models to choose from, let's narrow the choices a little bit and just talk about weapons. Have a look at all the different weapon models, copy your favorite link into a comment, and then tell us why you think it looks the best so that we can go check it out for ourselves!

Mac-based WoW players have been dealing with an odd little bug for quite some time. (More than one, actually, but I'm just going to talk about one here.) Whenever WoW is launched, it clears your Exposé hotkeys (by default, F9–F11). Oddly, it doesn't clear my Spaces hotkey, which is set to F12, just Exposé. I was hoping this bug would be gone in Leopard and/or patch 2.3, but apparently that's not in the cards. Going back into the Exposé & Spaces preference pane and resetting them isn't that hard, but it is annoying to have to do it every time.

Fortunately, the official forums have provided me with a solution. Temari of Kil'jaeden wrote a simple Applescript which sets your Exposé hotkeys back to their default settings. Run it after you quit WoW, and everything is once more as it should be. Here's the application version of it; if you want to tinker or investigate, here's the source code [edit: links fixed]. The script's creator suggests adding it to your dock next to WoW. I don't use the dock much (Quicksilver forever, baby), but that's probably a good idea for those of you who do. By the way, this is apparently an Apple bug, so don't blame the blue.

Edit: Please stop posting your platform war comments. Whether they're pro-Mac or anti-Mac, I don't care; don't post them please. I don't want to have to start deleting people.

For those of us who are both Mac users and WoW fans, there are two very important types of software release: a new patch for WoW and a new version of Mac OS X. Patch 2.3 may not be out yet (although we can always hope for next Tuesday), but Mac OS X 10.5, AKA Leopard, is released today! This is no place for a comprehensive review of the OS refresh (you'll have to head over to TUAW for that), but I would like to talk a bit about how 10.5 and WoW interact.

To put it bluntly, it's exactly the same. On my MacBook Pro, I'm not perceiving any difference between 10.5 and 10.4. The good side of that is that there are no crashes, stability issues, incompatibilities, or anything like that (at least not that anyone's come across yet). The bad side is that I'm not seeing any performance increase, which is a bit of a disappointment, since 10.5 apparently comes with a new version of OpenGL. There have been mumblings in the WoW Mac Tech Support forum that this update might help some people for a little while now, but at least for me, that does not seem to be the case. It still plays fine, certainly no worse than it did under 10.4. And the "stuttering" issue reported by players with the NVIDIA 8600 graphics card is, according to multiple forum reports, gone.

Fridays are a time for early happy hour quiet contemplation and reflection upon the past, and in that spirit we're taking a look back at some of the best posts from over the lifespan of Ask WoW Insider. Now that we're all older and wiser -- who *did* end up being the top PvP classes at 70?

• Best duo for PvP or grinding
  "What team of classes make the best duo for PVP or for grinding?"
• Top PvP classes at level 70
  Just after Burning Crusade came out, we speculated on which classes would dominate in PvP. Were we right? Would you change the answer you gave then?
• Best ways to make money in Burning Crusade
  "What are some good ways of making money for levels 60-70 in Burning Crusade? Are there people making money from jewelcrafting yet, should I pick that up? What about good mobs to grind or drops that sell well to vendors or on the AH?"
• Best way to get instance invites
  "What are your tips and tricks for convincing a group you've got the goods despite not having seen the inside of the dungeon?"
• Why are you overpowered?
  "Dig deep, self-examine and admit it: what makes your class overpowered?"
• How's WoW performance on a Mac?
  "I play Wow on a PC, and am looking towards a new computer purchase. One thing that influences my purchase is how well WoW will run on my new computer. I'm leaning towards a Mac, but how well does WoW run on a Mac?"
• Best way to power level alts
  "What's your strategy for the quickest power leveling? How do you maximize your time with your alts?"
• How would you design your own battleground?
  "What if you could design your own battleground? What would you do different or better than what is currently in the game?"
• When is it fair to upgrade an epic?
  "All DKP ideas aside, when is it fair to upgrade an epic over an epic?"
• Best healing class
  "Which class would you roll for a purely healing role? Which would you roll for a powerfully healing hybrid who might want to take on other roles from time to time? Relatedly, which healing class is the worst?"
• Best DPS class
  "Which classes can dish out the most DPS and which ones make the least amount of DPS?"
• Favorite WoW podcasts
  "There are a ton of WoW-themed podcasts out there now -- which would you recommend? What are your favorites?"
• Great ding stories
  "Any fun or interesting stories to tell about hitting the level cap? Or more generally, any memorable or unusual dings at any level?"

We see that look in your eye, and we know it means you want to send us questions. Ask WoW Insider needs 'em -- send them to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com!

If I'd had this tool a couple weeks ago, it would have made my last Build Shop much easier. Respec is a desktop talent calculator for the Mac (10.4+, Intel/PPC), and it works great as far as I can tell. In addition to talent-calculation basics, Respec has the following features:

• Save specs for later tweaking/reference
  
• Import from the Armory
• Export to Blizzard's calculator
  

You might argue that in this day of a web tool for everything, working on every platform, desktop tools like this are somewhat superfluous -- but that's only until you don't have internet access. Now you can play with talent specs on the plane! It's good to see someone developing WoW tools for the Mac, too. One feature request: export to Wowhead's calculator. Much cooler than Blizz's, in my opinion. By the way, what do you all think of the spec above? I was thinking of taking my warlock out of mothballs to try out that cool-looking Felguard that's always stomping me in PvP.

[thanks, Mike]

It really seems like Blizzard is taking leaps and strides in their efforts to support some of the fun things we've been doing outside of the game and putting them actually *in* the game.

When I read the patch notes and saw that the Mac client was getting in-game video recording, I immediately started my PTR client download. I was not to be disappointed.

With the new "Mac Options", I can choose the resolution to record at (600x400 in this case), the framerate, and the compression. I left these as defaults, but chose to turn off the UI, cursor, and sound.

Click through for a little more about the process for making the video, or just watch the video above to get an impression of what in-game recording is like.

I saw this screen shot last night on the WoW LJ community, and I have to admit, it took me by surprise. This is the first time I've ever actually seen the World of Warcraft launcher/load screen come out and point-blank warn people about the presence of Trojans on their machines. As there are a lot of variants of this particular Trojan out in the wild, that specific name doesn't surprise me.

Considering the fact that two Blue accounts were recently compromised, it looks like it's a good time to once again make sure your systems are patched, your virus scanners are up to date, and that you've got some good lines of defense against these Trojans. (Personally, I'm a huge fan of FireFox and some of the browser extensions that have come out for it.) Or, as some of my friends have told me, I could just get a Mac, and not have to worry so much about these kinds of things either. I keep telling them I'll happily switch when they buy me one.

Today's Ask WoW Insider brings us a corollary question to our WoW performance on Vista inquiry from a couple of months ago; Rotmeyer writes:

I play Wow on a PC, and am looking towards a new computer purchase. One thing that influences my purchase is how well WoW will run on my new computer. I'm leaning towards a Mac, but how well does WoW run on a Mac? What's the minimum Mac requirements for smooth framerate and gameplay? Could I play WoW on a Mac Mini? Thanks.

Without getting derailed into Yet Another Platform War, can anyone give Rotmeyer some advice or share your experiences running the WoW client on a Mac? Be as specific about the model and specs of your machine(s) as possible.

Don't forget: Ask WoW Insider needs your questions! What do you want to ask your peers? Put your thinking caps on and send your philosophical conundrums to us at ask AT wowinsider DOT com.

This tweak was reported to us by reader Blake some time back, but I've only recently had the chance to test it out myself. And, like most of the respondents in this thread, I agree that there's a noticeable improvement in framerate, though Blizzard poster Tigerclaw comments that the performance impact will really only effect those with heavy UI usage. The feature, added in patch 1.12.1, is designed for PowerPC Macs (the Intel systems already use "a better mode of optimization" according to Tigerclaw) with more than 512MB RAM, as it may add a couple of extra megabytes of memory usage. It's still considered a beta feature, but it's easy to enable and easy to disable if you have trouble with it. So if you run on a PowerPC system, give this a shot -- you may notice a 5-15% improvement (though some report even better improvements).

I'm not really sure whether to call this a review or not, but Macologist has posted an extremely in-depth overview of WoW entitled The Journey to 60 and Beyond. It's a look back at the game from a level 60 player designed as a sort of primer for the new or prospective player (so yeah, I guess it is kind of a review, if a belated one). It covers just about everything, from installation, to selecting a server & creating a character, to information about guilds, instances, quests, mounts, the endgame, and everything in between.

Not a ton of new info here for anyone who's been playing WoW for a while, but it's a very well-written look at the game for anyone who might be interested in learning more about the game, doing research, or looking to start playing themselves. Also, the article is from a Mac site, so all the tech-talk is Mac-centric, and there may be some tidbits of info that Mac users will find useful. You can read the full article here.

For all you Mac-based WoW players out there who have feared that the release of Apple's new Boot Camp software (allowing Mac users to run both Win XP & OS-X) might singal the end of native gaming development for the Mac, Blizzard has announced that the Mac version of WoW will indeed continue to recieve native support, so anyone worried about having to eventually switch to a Boot-Camped Windows version can rest easy.

Apple claims the Windows version of WoW should be playable with Boot Camp, but as the Boot Camp software is still in beta, they will not offer support for running in this environment.  A story in today's Macworld has more on the issue.

I still wanna know: how the heck do you play on a Mac without a second mouse button?