Once again, we find ourselves anxiously waiting for the World of Warcraft servers to come back up. However, today stands out as the best (and worst) variety of Tuesday downtime. Today we see the release of patch 2.4 and, for your addons, it is a day of reckoning. The majority of you are familiar with new content patches and the havoc they wreak on addons, but for those of you new to this; many of your addons could very well be broken.

There are a number of philosophies on how one should approach this. Some would suggest disabling your addons and waiting a few days until the storm subsides. Some have even said you should clear out your Addons folder, or your WTF folder. Clearing out the Addons folder gets rid of the addons, while deleting your WTF folder will clear all player and character settings. I personally go this route when I find that most of my addons are acting "buggy" or weird, or when I want to start with a clean slate.

I recently wrote an article on how you can automate the updating process, which I would recommend you take a look at, the servers are down anyway! Alright, really I would recommend reading through the comments of that post, as some of your fellow readers have some great advice and insight you may find helpful. Also, the folks over at WoWInterface contacted me in regards to their own addon updater, which looks promising as well. They have been busy testing it and have released a Windows version as well as a Mac/Linux version, both of which merit a look in my opinion. WoW Interface also released their Patch 2.4 Survival Guide, which I profiled recently. All this just screams that you've got options, so keep reading!

Blizzard regularly releases updates to World of Warcraft to add new content, fix problems, and otherwise improve the game. The game has evolved considerably throughout since its launch over 3 years ago. Many quests, instances, battlegrounds, events, items, and tools have been added through various patches. Clicking through the historical patch notes can be a source of nostalgia for many players.

According to Blizzard's schedule, the realms should have been back online about 20 minutes ago. So it should come as no shock that today's maintenance has been extended for an extra hour. (Or, to be precise, an extra sixty-one minutes. Why the extra minute? We can't say.) This isn't exactly a surprise, as patch deployment usually takes a bit longer than a normal maintenance cycle (and it seemed odd, earlier, that the login screen announced only a normal maintenance window). And to the European players in the audience -- this is what you get to look forward to tomorrow!

Update: Realms appear to be back online as scheduled!

According to MVP Schwick on the EU forums, several different anti-virus scanners have started detecting the Blizzard background downloader and some patch files as malware. With as much trouble as you can get into with certain kinds of malware, this sort of alert would be bound to panic anyone. However, this one has been confirmed by Blizzard as a false alarm. For now, be sure to download the latest updates to your anti-virus scanner, and if it detects any of the following, it's likely a false positive:

• Trojan-PSW.Win32.WOW
• R/PSW.WOW.RG.3
• Trojan horse PSW.Generic4.TUV

However, if, after upgrading your anti-virus software, you're still getting virus messages? Report it on the tech support forums. As Blizzard EU rep Torzelyn says:

Updating the Virus Scanners is removing the Trojan alert, but if your particular scanner is still flagging it as a trojan, please don't patch the game just yet. I'm sorry but I'm just wanting to be cautious. Although it appears to be a false positive, as with Kaspersky, AntiVir etc.. updating the definitions is solving the problem, I don't want to just say 'use the files' because there could still be a problem somewhere.

[Via BlizzPlanet]

Another week, another Tuesday maintenance. And it's not even a rolling restart week! So here we are all twiddling our thumbs and waiting for the servers to come back online. And, alas, while we've all no doubt been having fun playing with patch 2.1 on the test realms, we do know that today isn't the day. Of course this only leaves us with lots of room for speculation -- so I'm asking you, good readers, when do you think patch 2.1 will be headed towards the live realms? The patch has been running on the test realms since April 13th, which means next Tuesday's maintenance will be approaching the 4-week mark that I always use as a general guideline for patch releases. But Blizzard has been known to surprise even me. So let's hear your predictions -- when do you think we'll see patch 2.1 on the live realms?

There's plenty of room for argument on the topic of "best healer" in the game. And with some big changes coming to paladins in the upcoming 2.1 patch, the debate will only intensify. We've got priests with their versatile array of healing spells; paladins with their excellent mana efficiency and great buffs; druids with HoT domination and in-combat rez; and shamans with powerful (but difficult to use) totem buffs and self-rez as wipe protection. We could spend all day arguing the pros and cons of each class in a raid or small-group setting without coming to a conclusion!

But let's overlook the debate for now and just ask this basic question: who's actually out there healing you? A priest? A paladin? A druid? A shaman? A rogue with a good supply of bandages?

By now we all know that the PTRs are up and running (depending on your definition of "running" -- according to reports on the PTR forums they're crashing frequently) -- after all, the PTR client is where we got these lovely patch notes from! So, have you copied your characters over? Are you raiding the Black Temple to get the very first look at new content? In short, do you bother with all the tedious testing and bug reporting that's associated with playing on the public test realms? Or do you simply ignore the entire affair and continue playing the game as though nothing were happening?

I know that many of us read the new 2.1 patch notes and went into a panic. Paladin's illumination? Mage's sheep and ice block? Priest's shadow weaving? Shaman's elemental focus? There are plenty of changes here that could strike dread into the hearts of players who have picked their classes, talents, and professions for specific reasons that have suddenly vanished out from under them. But is it worth panicing over? I say not yet -- and Tseric agrees with me. The public test realms -- the only place where patch 2.1 is currently deployed -- are brought online for a reason. You guessed it: to test things.

While the test realms are online, we can all log on and get a first-hand look at how these changes will impact our characters. From there, we can offer our feedback and opinions. And, while many of you will say that these are never listened to, it's not unheard of for Blizzard to make major changes to a patch in light of public outcry. But for those of you in the audience who are upset or angry about the proposed patch 2.1 changes, I advise you to try to post your complaints calmly and constructively -- all caps typing and angry flames will only serve to get you banned from posting.

Now that we've had a little time to digest the lengthy 2.1 patch notes, it's time to ask what you think of the patch so far. Of course, I imagine opinions vary a great deal based on what class you're playing. I, for one, am incredibly impressed by Blizzard's ability to make me want to play a healer a little less with every new patch. (And I like healing.) But are you looking forward to the new content? Eager to jump into the Black Temple? Or are you disappointed by class changes and trying to decide what to reroll?

So the patch notes that we've mentioned recently on WoW Insider have turned out to be fake. And Blizzard doesn't seem any nearer to giving us real patch notes. So how does a curious player know what to look forward to in the next major content patch? Fortunately, EU MvP Schwick has an excellent compilation of every little bit of patch information that's been confirmed by Blizzard. It's not much information, but it is all we know for certain just now.

So for patch 2.1.0, you can expect the following changes:

• Feign Death fix
• New Rogue stealth animation
• More Humanoid Succubus CC
• PvP Matching system
• The Black Temple (aka the Black Citadel)
• Gruul's Lair changes
• Professions & Items
• Golden Hare fix
• Spellcloth fix
• Auction House Gem-section
• Flight path changes
• Blade's Edge Mountain graveyard
• Draenei quest drop fixes

Without any official word, who's to say whether these patch notes, posted on MMO-CHAMPION are legit or not. However, they include a number of features that we know are planned for 2.1.0, such as:

• The release of the Black Temple
• A battlegrounds matching system
• The re-valuing of sockets on items
• The change to warlock's succubus pet's seduce ability
• An engineering revamp
• A new LFG system

This adds some reliability to these patch notes, but, there are some quite unexpected things in these notes, as well -- read on for more details.

Update: Keep reading if you like, but, yep, these are fake. (Some people clearly have too much time on their hands!)

As Blizzard would hate to leave anyone out of the joy of patch 2.0.10, we have recent news of a change for mages. And despite the fact that I don't regularly play a mage, I don't think it's good news for the class. Tseric informs us that you were never intended to be able to crit a frozen target and have the target remain frozen. So as of patch 2.0.10, any crit (and that is any crit at all, not just a crit by the mage) on a frozen target will immediately unfreeze them.

So watch out, rogues -- you could be the next victims of patch 2.0.10!

Blizzard has updated their 2.0.10 patch notes to include the recently announced changes to paladins and priests -- as well as a few surprises. Complete patch notes are after the jump (with changes from the previous notes in bold), but here's the unexpected bits:

• The effectiveness of priest's "Fade: Rank 7" has been increased by approximately 25%. This doesn't address concerns about Fade's uselessness in PvP and solo situations, it should help priests in some group situations.
• Per Nethaera, the priest's Circle of Healing spell mana cost will be reduced by 25%, not 33% as the patch notes say, or 30% as Eyonix mentioned recently. (Yes, I'm confused too.)
• The bonus of shaman's "Wrath of Air" (currently increases spell damage by up to 101) totem now applies to healing spells as well. Not a bad buff for healing shamans or any healers grouping with shamans.
  
• Increased the health bonus from warrior's "Commanding Shout" by 50%. The should increase the health bonus from 730 to 1095.
  
• The warrior's "Improved Battle Shout" talent has been renamed to "Commanding Presence" and now increases the health bonus from "Commanding Shout" in addition to increasing the melee attack power from "Battle Shout".
• Many dungeon tweaks.

Update: Changed info on Circle of Healing's mana cost reduction, thanks, Synapse!
Update 2: Changed the numbers on Commanding Shout in a weak effort to prove I can do math. Thanks, Beldoro!

Paladins rejoice, because Blizzard has decided to reverse the two changes that were planned to be implemented in 2.0.10. Eyonix informs us that they felt "the adjustments were too imposing on the class' ability to tank in dungeons." So Avenging Wrath won't be sharing a cooldown with Divine Shield (but will invoke Forbearance) and Forbearance won't give the player a -15% damage debuff. This should mean that paladins will be unchanged in patch 2.0.10.

While it's not clear if this is the mystery buff Nethaera was telling us about, Eyonix let us in on some interesting changes. In addition to looking at improving Lightwell and analyzing priest survivability in PvP and PvE, Blizzard is planning on making the following concrete changes:

• The cooldown on Prayer of Mending has been reduced to 10 seconds (instead of the planned 20 second cooldown).
• The damage mitigation of Power Word: Shield is being improved by increasing the bonus it gains from +healing gear by 10% (to 20%).
• Circle of Healing will now cost 30% less mana.

And while these are certainly improvements, I can't say that they excite me terribly much. The lessened cooldown for PoM is certainly better, but still worse than it is on live. And while PW:S will scale better than it does now, it still won't scale very well. And I'm not sure I'll want to spec for Circle of Healing regardless of how much mana it costs. So, yes, these are buffs -- but not particularly strong buffs and not buffs that seem to address priests' primary concerns. However, if they're still looking at priest survivability, we may yet have good news coming.

Druids have received some significant changes in the coming 2.0.10 patch, but while there's lots of complaint and speculation, there's little agreement on what the changes will actually do for druids. But the loudest complaint is that druids will no longer be able to tank and will be once more reduced to a pure healing role. Note that there are no changes to cat or moonkin effectiveness or damage output, which does leave DPS as an option (in both PvE and PvP) -- but with so many classes able to DPS and so few classes able to heal, druids are reasonably concerned about being marginalized. The facts on bears from the patch notes are as follows:

• Bear/dire bear form's health bonus has changed from +25% health to +25% stamina. While this sounds like a non-change, this means that +health enchants and health-increasing potions or flasks are no longer considered in the bonus calculation, resulting in a loss of health for some druids.
• Dire bear form's armor bonus has been reduced from +450% to +400%.
• The talent Savage Fury no longer affects mangle (bear), maul, or swipe. Savage Fury previously increased damage done by those abilities by 20% for two talent points. The ability lacerate is the only bear ability that is not effected by this change, but only because it wasn't effected by the talent previously. (This talent will still have benefits to cat form, but no longer benefits any abilities in bear form.)
  
• The talent Predatory Instincts has been changed from a critical damage increase of 3/6/9/12/15% to a critical damage increase of 2/4/6/8/10%.
• The rage normalization equation has been adjusted to grant more rage.
  

While we won't know the full story until the final changes hit the live realms, by piecing together some of the data coming from players on the PTRs, I think we can make some reasonable guesses. Curious? Keep reading.