In case you'd like to get a sneak peek at what you'll be rampaging all over in Wrath, Blizzard has just put up an interactive map of the new continent of Northrend on its site. It's pretty, of course, but also information-packed. For each zone, if you click on it, it lists the following information:

• Level range of the zone; the two starting zones are listed as 68–72, as we expected.
• Flight points, Alliance, Horde, and neutral. All the zones seem to have plenty of flight points, which will make it less painful not to have flying mounts until 77.
• Instances, with levels for those.
• Raids. Interestingly, both the raids currently in beta (Naxxramas and Chamber of Aspects) are in Dragonblight; I hadn't realized that.
• Zone map
  

Obviously, if you're averse to these kinds of spoilers, don't click over. Otherwise, enjoy the pretty pictures. 55 days until LK; I can't wait.

It's not an iPhone Armory app, but Blizzard did release some official content for your mobile phones. They've set up a mobile.blizzard.com site, at which you can buy wallpapers and ringtones from WoW and the other Blizz franchises. At this point, you're probably asking yourself one question: can I get a murloc gurgle ringtone? The answer, thankfully, is yes. Yes you can. (Though I can't guarantee it's a good idea.)

There is a big catch: the ringtones are priced at $2.99 each. Yikes. I know ringtones are big business, and I know Blizz is all about the tie-ins, but this is foolishness. Who would pay this over recording an MP3 and sending it to their phone? The wallpapers are $1.99, which is equally dumb for something I could just as easily screenshot off Blizz's concept art pages and email to my phone. Also I can't find the USA or Canada on the list of countries; it seems, at least at the moment, that these are not available here.

It's a shame that these are so oddly expensive, and that they're not even available in the US, because some of them are pretty well-done. It would be awesome to play the WoW intro theme when my guildies text me to go raid. I guess I'll just have to make my own ringtone for it.

The latest beta build has brought a new twist to the good old map interface. As MMO Champion reports, there is now a dropdown box on the map screen, letting you choose from a few different "floors." What this means exactly, we aren't sure -- the obvious conclusion is that you'll now be able to look at different sections of the world map (for example, see into different levels of buildings or caverns). And Dalaran (which this map is a part of) is one of those areas that has two different levels, so this particular menu will let you see both halves of the city.

But this also suggests an even bigger change: including maps of instances in the official interface. Since launch, Blizzard hasn't ever shown us ingame instance maps (though we're not sure why -- maybe they want to require players to explore instances rather than follow a map through them). But lately, addons like Atlas have made them easily available to players, so maybe Blizzard has decided it's time to map out dungeons as well. We'll have to see what use they put this new dropdown to.

European players have been apparently encountering lag, disconnections, and neglect from Blizzard Europe for the past little while (or so they keep writing into us and saying). Perhaps this is what the European team has been working on: they've just released official Wrath talent calculators, for all ten classes.

At a glance, I didn't notice any differences between this and the calculators that have been up on Wowhead (and elsewhere) for a little while - i.e., they both reflect the current beta versions of everything. And I actually find that the Wowhead calculators run better for me (after all, talent calculators were Wowhead's original reason for being). Still, it's exciting to see these made official: a sign that the Lich King draws ever nearer. Can anyone spot a difference between the official calculators and what we already knew?

Update: Now up on the US site too (thanks, Darias).

I spend most of my evenings perusing the North American and European WoW Foums for interesting topics for our Forum Post of the Day feature. I've come across all kinds of threads from the uplifting, to the whiney, to the popular discussion. They are a great resource for tips and strategies.

Blizzard welcomes constructive criticism and suggestions from the WoW community. You are welcome to be a part of it as well. There are a few things you should know about the forums.

The official US website came back up an hour or two ago, and with it came a "reputation tips" guide for the Shattered Sun Offensive. Now I asked myself when I saw this, of all the factions, why SSO? They're one of the easiest, not to mention most profitable, factions out there; surely people can just do a bunch of dailies and get to Exalted in a week or so.

However, it turns out that although this presents itself as a faction guide, what it really is is a quest guide. It covers all the Isle of Quel'Danas daily quest as well as the SSO-associated Outland dailies. While you won't find anything new in there if you've done the quests a few times, newcomers to the Isle may find some useful tips, such as:

• Do Further Conversions and Arm the Wards at the same time.
• You can take the readings for Know Your Ley Lines while being attacked.
• You don't have to have killed the Emissary of Hate to plant the banner on him for The Battle Must Go On; just find the corpse.
• You have to be wearing the goggles to see the distortions for The Multiphase Survey.
• Your Flare can pick up charges off the Incandescent Fel Sparks for Blast the Gateway even if you're not the one who kills the Spark, as long as you're nearby.
  

I must confess, I've stopped doing the dailies altogether now, as I'm Exalted on both my 70s and have faster ways to get gold when I need it. But it is certainly one of the more enjoyable reputation grinds.

It's been almost a full year since I last saw this brought up, and we still haven't seen anything from Blizzard on it. Eric over on WoW LJ brings up the issue of tracking alts within a guild. As we found out last time, most people just use guild notes (or helpful addons) to keep track of whose alt is whose inside a guild, and it works OK -- assuming people are up front about when they're logging in on another toon.

But still, it seems like an official interface would work much better. And especially considering that Blizzard is actually going to start encouraging alts as a part of the gameplay (you have to have a character at least 55 on the account to start up a Death Knight, and there are rumors that alts will benefit from reputation grinds as well), it seems like they might be interested in making the connection between characters on the account a little more obvious.

And as we said last time, there are benefits to the guild as well -- you never know when that lowbie leveling through Westfall might actually have a Death Knight ready to tank for you. I'm still not sure about marking alts in the Armory, but if you join up to a guild, I'd think guilds should have the right to know, officially, who's an alt of whom.

Beckett Media is a company normally known for their collectible magazines -- they cover things like baseball cards, Yu-Gi-Oh, toys, and all of that other junk most people don't bother with (ok, ok, I kid, collectors, but I don't get the point of buying toys you don't take out of the box). Apparently, a little while back, Beckett started to get into another field where most of what you do is collecting: massively multiplayer online games, and they started a magazine called Beckett Massive Online Gamer. And now, they've started publishing a series of biannual guides for various online games, starting with our very own World of Warcraft.

We haven't seen the guide, but their sales page promises "tips for conquering dungeons, guides for leveling to 70," and "perfecting WoW endgame classes," all for only $9.99. To tell the truth, it sounds pretty lame (not to mention that you can get exactly the same stuff right here for the low, low price of free), but at least there's another print competitor to the official Brady Guides -- if you absolutely need your WoW news in print form, you've got at least two choices now.

Anyone seen one of these yet? Next time you're at the collectibles store, see if they've got one sitting on the magazine shelf and let us know what it looks like.

If you're a fan of Gazmik Fizzwidget's addons (including Feed-o-matic, ReagentCost, and Linkerator), you'll be happy to know that he's already jumping on top of patch 2.4, and in fact he's working right now on a beta of one of his most popular addons, Hunter's Helper. You can download the beta over on WoWInterface -- it won't work so well under WoW 2.3, but it's designed to be taken out on the TTR (or the PTR, if that comes back before the patch drops), and tested out.

Since it's likely that the patch will drop tomorrow, hopefully Fizzwidget has worked out most of the kinks. But it's awesome to see an addon developer ready to go for a brand new patch -- it's too bad that Blizzard hasn't been more proactive in helping these guys out with distributing their new versions around a big patch. Maybe once the Armory has gotten to a point where it's serving all the needs Blizzard wants it to, they can start working on an official third-party addon site.

[Via Mania]

Axel on LJ points us to an easter egg on the Official WoW page that I can't help think must be fairly old, but I've never seen it before, so here you go: highlighting text under the Warlock and Warrior listings on the class page reveals some funny flavor text.

The US page seems to have been changed from the original above (as of this writing, under Warlocks it says "hey you found some hidden text, there must be some giant conspiracy here"), but the European page shows the original "cool guy/girl" as a recommended player for Warlocks. At least one commenter on the LJ page says this has been around since day one on the main page, and I wouldn't be surprised -- Blizzard is familiar with leaving secrets on the official page for players.

Blizzard's official Wrath of the Lich King page has gone live, including the cinematic, story links, zone overviews, artwork, and the same feature rundown you've already seen:

The Lich King Arthas has set in motion events that could lead to the extinction of all life on Azeroth. With the armies of the undead and the necromantic power of the plague threatening to sweep across the land, only the mightiest heroes can oppose the Lich King's will and end his reign of terror for all time.

Blizzard Entertainment's latest expansion to World of Warcraft – Wrath of the Lich King – adds a host of epic content to the existing game world. Players will achieve soaring levels of power, explore a vast new continent, and battle other high-level heroes to determine the fate of Azeroth...

There's not too much there on the game mechanics, Death Knights, Inscription, or anything, but it sure is pretty. By the way, it looks like the leaked FAQ was 100% legit.

Visitors to the official forums this weekend may have noticed a new name in blue: Timbal is a brand new Blizzard poster (and he's already closing threads with the best of them). But while players are guessing that Timbal is Tseric's replacement, and all the baggage that comes with that, Drysc points out that Timbal is a forum moderator, not actually a community manager. Timbal obviously doesn't have an avatar yet, either, but I'm not sure if that's because he's a mod, or because he's new.

What's the difference? In short, Timbal and the other mods oversee the forums, while the CMs (like Drysc and Nethaera) oversee the community. As you can see from that last link, Blizzard still has the CM help wanted ad up, and so it seems to be a pretty good guess that Tseric hasn't been replaced yet.

Or maybe he won't be. According to what I've heard from players, the forums need more moderation than management-- while Blizzard's CMs have been focused on the forums, I'd suggest WoW's community isn't really there anymore (if it ever was, really). It's either in game, or on sites like WoW Insider. Lots of players have asked for a change in the forums, either a crackdown on the shenanigans that seem to take place there, or just a way to make them more relevant to the game. Hiring Timbal as a moderator might be a step towards moderation, and a step away from relying on CM activity in the forums as Blizzard's way of managing their connection with the WoW community.

More bad news for us Orc males out there. Ever since the problem with our shoulders showed up, Blizzard has promised, more than once, that it was a bug, and the fix was coming in 2.2. The only problem is that the shoulders haven't actually gone back to normal on the PTR at all. And now, as Kenneth pointed out in a tip (thanks!), the small Orc shoulders have appeared in the official art on Blizzard's armor page. If you flip between the Tier 5 set and the Arena season set 2, you can see that for the newer armor, the official art shows the small, puny shoulders.

Now, this doesn't actually mean that Blizzard is lying to us-- maybe one of their staffers had to get the armor set in, and accidentally used the small shoulder art. But it does at least tell us that Blizzard's right hand isn't talking to their left. And it does give just a little more credence to the conspiracy theorists among us-- why were the shoulders changed in the first place? Is Blizzard trying to stealth nerf those gigantic Orc shoulders?

Admittedly, it's not a huge deal (unless you're a male Orc and extremely proud of your larger than life shoulder armor). But you do have to wonder why Blizzard is being so skittish about this-- are they actually trying to make changes to the art that players just don't agree with? And if it is just a bug, why hasn't it been fixed yet?

Just in case you haven't seen them yet (and you probably have, because you are a knowledgeable WoW Insider reader), Blizzard has added the Tier 6 armor sets to their game guide.

It's an easy little interface, and you can very easily see any of the armor sets (and all of their variants, which makes me think that it might be cool if the different spec variants actually looked, y'know, different) on any race, and even any gender of your choice. Gaze at the beauty of the Skyshatter set! Be in awe of the Warlock's Malefic armor! And puzzle why Paladins got yet another strange-looking armor set. Blizzard should just put ballerina gowns on them next time and be done with it.