MMO-Champion has posted images of possible new portals to Theramore and Stonard in patch 2.4. Now, the highest level mage I have is level 20, so this probably won't directly affect me in any way, but I have to think the idea of new portals and the ability to teleport to new places would be pretty nice for mages. I guess it would all depend on what level they had to be to get these new abilities. A portal to Theramore wouldn't really be that helpful for a level 70 mage as far as I can tell, but I could be wrong: it would certainly make the CoT instances easier to run. (Then again, we're supposedly getting a teleporter directly to those anyway, and a Stonard portal wouldn't help with that.)

What do you think? Is this perhaps a clue that players will be heading to Northrend from a Stonard dirigible or a Theramore boat? I may be reaching there.

As I've mentioned before, The Darkmoon Faire is currently in Terrokar Forest, just outside Shattrath City, so if you have decks to turn in or need to refill your private stock of Darkmoon Special Reserve, now's the time to get on it. But if you're still a little bit taken aback by the prospect of gathering all those cards, or wondering if the trinket at the end will really be worth it, we'd like to help you out.

In this post, we'll be looking at both the old and new decks and listing some pros and cons of each deck so you can figure out if you want to spend the next month tracking down cards before the Faire shows up in Elwynn Forest in March, or even if you just want to blow your epic flying mount fund on getting a deck before it leaves for the month.

We'll start in on everything after the jump.

It never really gets old speculating about what Blizzard has hidden away for the future, whether it be for the Sunwell Plateau, Wrath of the Lich King or something else entirely. The topic of Warlock pets comes up every now and then on the Wrath forums and while I don't play a Warlock, its an intriguing topic. Warlocks currently have six baseline demons, two of which have a slightly different summoning process. They can get another through being specced deep Demonology. If you count the Felguard as their level 70 addition in the Burning Crusade, they get one roughly every ten levels, so its safe to assume they have something coming in Wrath.

First thing to consider is what role the pet would play. Everything but healer has been done already, and I don't want to even think about a Warlock with a pet healer. The Felguard is essentially a direct upgrade to the Voidwalker, so something like that is more likely. Personally, I think a Shivarra would fit the next demon well, and act as a direct upgrade to the Succubus.

Second thing to consider is whether it would make sense from a lore point of view. As fun as it would be to summon a pet Pit Lord whenever you want, that seems unlikely. Same with the Nathrezim or the Eredar. Shivan or something we haven't seen yet seems the most likely choice.

Many of us have stepped through the Dark Portal into Outland, and in that time dozens of players have mastered the content available there. Now that we have BlizzCon in our sites, all eyes seem to be on what our next expansion will be. As Chris Metzen mentioned at the last BlizzCon, Outland is peppered with portals, each with the potential to open another world for us to explore.

I personally know of two such dead portals, empty and devoid of life. The first is in Zangarmarsh, at the appropriately named Portal Clearing, and the second is in Nagrand. Have you found any other portals in your time in Outland? If so, do you think that the locations of the portals could be a clue to what lies behind them? Going with this theory, we might postulate that the Zangarmarsh portal might lead to the Maelstrom, since that zone is riddled with naga. What do you think?

The other day I was helping a guildie with their mage as they reached 20. Thus began the long journey to collect teleportation training from around Azeroth. Something he said along the way stuck with me though. He mentioned that he hardly sees people asking for portals to Darnassus now. I thought about it, and would have to agree. I seem to sell as many ports to Darnassus as I sell to the Exodar. The cities are so closely linked, it's fairly easy to hop on a boat and be anywhere on Kalimdor that you need to be.

Why then the great level difference in the training? The portal to Darnassus still remains a spell you can train in at level 50, while the portal to the Exodar is a level 40 spell. This goes for the teleport spells as well, since the level for Darnassus is 30, while all the others are available at level 20. So in essence, all that bouncing around the continent starts ten levels sooner. I imagine that initially the portal to Darnassus was level 50 because it represents a greater magical achievement. You are now transporting a group across the ocean. Does the Exodar require less skill to use? You are still transporting people across the Great Sea. Wouldn't it in fact require more skill, seeing as how we have had a longer history with the Night Elves than we have with the Draenei? I am thinking that the developers might want to take a look at the level requirements for the portals. The initial level requirements seemed to support the lore. The training, as it stands currently, does not.

A possible explanation is that Night Elves shun arcane magic. However, they do accept the portal trainer within their city, so this argument doesn't seem to work for me. If they let that first mage in there to create the portals in the first place, why would it be more difficult for other mages to do so? Is there some sort of other explanation that I'm missing as to why there is such a level discrepancy with both the teleport and the portal spells to Darnassus?