This week we have a new comic up for scrutiny concerning Blizzcon, a comic depicting the humorous side of the Midsummer Fire Festival, and some pretty aggressive battle strategy.

1. A new comic has sprung up about the adventures of two 'durids' attempting to get to Blizzcon. It makes use of a bit too much lol-speak for my tastes, but what do you guys think?
2. The fellows of Dark Legacy Comics are going to require a Plan B if they hope to reclaim their place on the top of the hierarchy. Also, I am jealous of their murloc action figure.
3. On LFG, the gnomes are coming to save the day! This episode actually stands well on its own.
4. When stealth goes wrong. NoObz.
5. Episode 21 of The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf is A Midsummer Night's Dream.

Are you ready to vote?

The Midsummer Fire Festival is just about wrapped up, and all of the quests, lore and drops are going with it. It's sad to see it go, but all good things must come to an end. Daniel asked what you were doing with the time left the other day, but now that it's pretty much done for, have you gotten your hands on all you wanted?

My one and only goal for the Fire Festival was to get my hands on Ahune's Frostscythe. I've wanted a scythe on my Priest ever since Warlocks got one as a quest reward back in the day. I probably have pretty much the best guild in the world, because they took turns rotating alts to summon Ahune for me throughout the festival. When the thing finally dropped, we had killed the Frostlord roughly eighty times and we got five Scorched Stones for various people. We have decided my loot luck could not possibly be worse.

How about all of you? Did you get the brazier? The dress? Did you say 'forget it' and blow all of your Blossoms on Midsummer Sausage? Most importantly, did you stock up one these sweet new fireworks?

The Midsummer Fire Festival officially ends on July 5th, just a few scant days away. That means no more Lord Ahune, no more chances to get the Deathfrost enchant, no more desecration, no more turning into a crab, no more Torch Tossing... Yeah, I'm a little bummed too.

Still, we have a couple days left to make the best of it. Of course, the question is -- what exactly do we do with it? Myself, I'm torn. My enchanter still needs the Deathfrost enchant, so I may want to get a group together and go slay Ahune a few more times. Then again, I still haven't gotten some of the Midsummer loot on a couple of my 70s, so maybe I want to make a push to get the last few blossoms for those.

But I'm also thinking that it would be nice to get my shaman to level 30 before Patch 2.4.3, and thus I'm tempted to just go out and slog through the last few levels with her, bolstered by the all the various Fire Festival buffs and the Ribbon Dance buff.

I'll have to think about it some more, but in the meantime, do you have a plan for these last few days of the Midsummer Fire Festival?

When you decide to roleplay, a whole new world of imagination opens up to you -- soon you realize that all the World of Warcraft is a stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players.

Blizzard definitely cares about roleplayers. They listen to us and there's a special place for us in their hearts -- which is natural, because in many ways, their whole world has its own story and background which means a lot to them, and while all players get to see that story unfolding through their activities in the game, roleplayers are the ones who participate in that story by making their own stories within it.

The problem is that Blizzard and its roleplayers are on pretty different wavelengths when it comes to what roleplayers want to receive and what Blizzard wants to provide. Blizzard wants to give us more neat toys and perfect places to enjoy, with lots of lore and story behind them -- and while this is all very interesting and everyone enjoys it, most roleplayers are wishing they had more sandbox-like tools, spaces and items they can easily bend or shape in their own ways, to use for their own purposes.

Blizzard may care, but do they really understand? Read on for insights Blizzard may be missing.

Tomorrow's podcast is going to be a big one -- not only am I back on the air after being away last week, but Matthew Rossi and John "BigBearButt" Patricelli are both going to join me, Duncor the Dependable will likely be on from WoW Radio, and oh yeah -- by the podcast tomorrow, we'll know what the hell Blizzard has been hinting at for the past week. And there's more: not only will we be talking at length both about what Blizzard announces tomorrow and also what they don't announce, but we've got an ace in the hole: Turpster is live in Paris at the Worldwide Invitational right now, and if we can get our telegraph machine working correctly, we'll have a live-on-the-spot report from the T himself. He'll probably be drunk on French wine, but still, he'll give us a Turps-eye-view of what's going down in the land of croissants.

We'll probably also chat a little bit about Arena Season 4, as well as what's going on with the Midsummer Fire Festival, but my guess is that whatever Blizzard announces tomorrow will pretty much dominate the conversation. Tune in over on WoW Radio at 3:30pm Eastern for the very first audio words in what's going on in Paris.

And as usually, we'll be answer your questions via email (theshow@wowinsider.com), and chatting live on IRC at irc.mmoirc.com in the #wowradio channel, so you can ask Turpster what France smells like (I'm guessing frog's legs and the burning fires of the revolution, but I've never been, so who knows). Tune in tomorrow to the WoW Insider Show for all the news that's fit to talk about on WWI '08!

Welcome to Know Your Lore, where each week Alex Ziebart brings you a tasty little morsel of lore to wrap your mind around. Sweet, sweet lore. Mmmm.

In the spirit of the Midsummer Fire Festival, We're going to take a look at the Elemental Lords, one of which was the inspiration for this holiday. The Elemental Lords were originally agents of the Old Gods, and some of their most powerful ones at that. They were used to do little more than sew chaos in Azeroth and keep it in a constant state of disorder.

As we know, the Old Gods didn't hold up very well against the Titans and their champion, Sargeras. When the Old Gods were beaten, bloodied, and chained far beneath the earth, their Elemental Lieutenants received similar treatment. All four of them were banished from the plane of mortals, trapped within an Elemenal Plane, where they could cause as much trouble amongst themselves as they wanted without bothering Azeroth.

Of course, long after the Pantheon no longer had an active hand on Azeroth, the mortal races did catastrophically dumb things as they usually do and ruined it for everybody.

The second half of June has been pretty hopping in the World of Warcraft. Not only is Arena Season 4 finally going live today, but patch 2.4.3 is on the PTRs, and the Midsummer Fire Festival is on the live servers. On top of that, we're scant days away from Blizzard's Worldwide Invitational, and we have a mysterious splash screen that may herald a rather large announcement.

The downtime for today's Maintenance is going to be pretty extensive as well, from 3am PDT to 11am PDT, which means you'll need some reading material while you wait for those servers to come back. Once again, I am here for you, with a round-up of all the best news from the past week here on WoW Insider, organized by category.

Let's start with finding out what's going on with patch 2.4.3:

• You can read the patch notes right here.
• Find out how 2.4.3 can help that bag space problem - wealthy socialite style!
• Feeling like you need a new hat? Try beating up an old man and his dog.
• If you can't log on to the PTRs, get the next best thing with our 2.4.3 eyecandy gallery.
• Yes, Virgina, there are premades on the PTRs this time around (Although only on the US servers, at least for the moment).
• The new TCG Loot is available for testing on the PTR, and we've got video of our own testing run.
• Ponies at level 30? You heard right.
• So you've read about the Cheat Death nerf, but aren't sure what it means? Let us enlighten you.

Here's a great tip from Darthkurai on LJ: doing the Midsummer Fire quests as a lowbie will net you a ton of nice XP. He grabbed almost two levels' worth of XP at level 40, just for running around to all the different bonfires throughout Azeroth. Bewarned that some of the quests have various level requirements on them (Undercity and all of the capital flames, as he finds out, are level 50 and above only, and of course Lord Ahune is only for level 70s), but doing all of the quests at low levels will net you a good 6-7k XP, which around level 40 will give you at least a ding or two.

Pretty good for just running around the world once or twice. Everyone's excited about Ahune and what you can get from him, but don't forget your old alts, either -- logging them on during the festival and showing them the world (while killing on the way with those buffs) can grab you a nice chunk of free XP for them as well.

We love to give here at WoW Insider. We're just givers. We provided a guide to the Midsummer Fire Festival, including a level guide, instructions on how to steal the opposite faction's fire, a walkthrough and a loot table for conquering Lord Ahune, and a guide to most of the other festival quests. Now we present a quick guide to getting your very own Tabard of Summer by completing the Shards of Ahune quest.

After you've taken down Lord Ahune in the Slave Pens, loot the Ice Chest he drops. If you get an item called Shards of Alune, you can right-click it to start the quest. Um, then the rest is ever so tough. You just trot yourself over to Luma Skymother, a female Tauren in the Slave Pens and complete the quest with her. She'll give you 20 Burning Blossoms and your choice of tabards -- either with Flames or Skies. Note that you need to be at least Level 66 to obtain and complete this quest.

That's all there is to it! Well, except for making it through the Slave Pens alive and defeating Lord Ahune and some junk. But hey, who knows, maybe when you get yours, it will show this elusive mystery tooltip when you inspect it. A prize inside, just like Cracker Jacks!

You don't have to be level 70 to get in on most of the fun for this year's Midsummer Fire Festival. Here is a guide to the minimum levels required (as stated by Kisirani) and recommended for each of the quests:

• Torch Tossing and Torch Catching have no minimum level requirement. Because you complete these quests in the safety of a capital city, any level is appropriate.
• Honoring the flames has no minimum level requirement. Unless you are 50+, however, the recommended level is the same as the level of the area you can comfortably hunt in.
• Desecrating flames also has no minimum level requirement, but considering it flags you for PvP even on a PvE server, do so at your own risk if you are low level.
• Incense for the Festival Scorchlings also has no minimum level and any level is recommended.
• Unusual Activitiy requires level 16, but I wouldn't recommend lower than 20 given that you have to fight level 20 and 21 cultists and the area is rotten with level 20 Naga.
• A Thief's Reward or stealing the flames in the other faction's capital cities required a minimum level of 50, but if the flame is at all defended, it's best to be level 70.
• Lord Ahune requires a minimum level of 65. Slave Pens is where he resides, so any level above the minimum that you feel comfortable in that instance is recommended. Edited to add: Upon further review, the recommended level to complete this quest is 70 and it is easier if the 70s in your group are well-geared.
  

These quests give a lot of experience if you are below 70 and a lot of money if you aren't. Regardless of the rewards, however, these quests are a fresh infusion of fun during this period of pre-expansion blahs. So if you haven't tried them yet, what are you waiting for?

So by now, you've done some of the Midsummer quests, desecrated a few flames, and you have a bunch of Burning Blossoms burning a hole in your pocket. The question now is: What are you going to do with all of those? Sure, you can throw them in the nearest Festival Bonfire for the sweet buffs, but you can also spend them at the Midsummer Merchants and Midsummer Suppliers located next to every Capital City's fire.

After the break, we'll look at exactly what you can buy and what they do.

The Lord Ahune encounter is very easily one of the most enjoyable 5-man encounters we've seen in a very long time. The Burning Crusade added some elements we had never seen in the pre-expansion days, and I feel that this boss takes it much further than that.

Ahune is found within the Slave Pens, and while he's fairly close to the beginning of the instance, you'll need to do a little bit of clearing before you fight him. Since Slave Pens is one of the easier dungeons in The Burning Crusade (both Normal and Heroic versions), you shouldn't have much trouble with this step. Once you've reached the area where you summon Lord Ahune (and you will know when you get there), buff up, drink up, and make sure your party is ready. While not the most difficult encounter in the world, this alternating two phase boss fight can drag on a really long time if you're not ready.

Some of our quest guides have been updated since yesterday with a few bits of missing information. It should be a little more friendly to players completely new to the holiday, as well as those that have only played one of the two factions. Not only are there more details throughout, but the zones are listed beside the cities in our Desecrate the Flames list, which was one of our most requested additions to our guide.

Hopefully our guides are helping you all in your Midsummer questing. Make sure you keep an eye on WoW Insider as well, because later today we have a Lord Ahune walkthrough coming your way!