We've heard about a lot of problems with the Headless Horseman summon this year already (and Coren Direbrew had issues as well), but Kimberly over on WoW LJ has the worst story I've heard so far -- a group asked her to heal, claimed they all had summons, and then after killing the HH with her summon, ditched her, presumably to find some other sucker with a summon. That's not just scamming someone into taking you along for a round of summons (as we heard about in Guildwatch yesterday), it's actually scamming someone out of the rest of their chances, because, assuming Kimberly is honest for the rest of the day, why would another group take her?

So this is clearly a problem. Let's fix it for Blizzard: how can we make sure everyone has five chances a day at summoning the Headless Horseman (one per day per group member) without ripping off people for helping their guildies or friends? Basically, we need a clear way of seeing whether someone has a summon or not -- maybe a debuff that resets at midnight every night, or a changing number of candles on the pedestal based on how many people in the instance can still do the daily quest? Right now, there's no accountability at all, and with droprates the way they are, getting screwed out of another chance at the HH (or even four chances, in the worst cases) can make the difference between having the achievement and not.

Any other good ideas on how to solve this problem and keep players accountable? I'm sure players with less than upright morals have no problem claiming their brother used their summon or lying to steal the summons of others, but it would be a lot more fair for everyone if the possibility for scamming wasn't there at all.

Time once again to put a question to you, dear readers, and see what you have to say about a current issue in the World of Warcraft. This time around, Rylia has a question about loot ethics with seasonal bosses -- everyone and their guildie is taking down the Headless Horseman (making the Scarlet Graveyard an actual destination, strangely), and Rylia wants to know what the policy is when an item drops:

What's your group loot policy for seasonal bosses? (a) Use the usual in-game loot roller; everyone roll Need on the rare items (mounts, small pets, etc.) (b) Whoever summons the boss for that particular attempt gets the rare item drop from that attempt. The logic behind (b) is that it prevents people who've used up their daily summons from getting more than one chance per day (and thus making their groupmates get less than one chance per day). If someone who didn't have a summon in your seasonal group wins a rare roll, do you think that's a ninja?

Rylia

Personally, I think all the summons should get settled before you enter the instance -- if you invite someone in without a summon (for example, because they're a tank, and you just need them rather than waiting for a tank with a summon), they're a part of the group after that and have as much chance as anyone else to win a roll. And yes, if an item drops that someone can use, it should be a Need roll. So if that mount drops, everyone's got a chance to win it. That's just me, though -- I can see the point about someone without a summon taking loot from people who entered with a summon.

Though I have no idea what to do if a mount and pet drops on the same run -- would the person who won one not get a chance on the second? What think you, readers, both of general loot rules on season bosses and of Rylia's summon policy?

Previously on Ask WoW Insider...

Here's a somewhat annoying little problem with the Beta. As of the latest build, you can't just walk into Dalaran, or rather, you can't just use the teleportation crystal go up. Instead, you have to complete a quest to align yourself to Dalaran. But this quest is only available at level 74.

In the Outlands, it's not uncommon for a fresh 58 to head through the Dark Portal and right to Shattrath City. Binding in one of the Inns there essentially puts all of the Outlands before you, with flights connecting you easily to where you wish to go.

It seems strange that Blizzard has put up this strange quest attunement roadblock to those who wish to alight from the boat to Northrend and head straight to the capital. Perhaps it's a similar decision that caused them to restrict flying mounts to level 77 and above -- they don't want people skimping on exploration and seeing content, so they make you hang around the newbie zones for a while before you can just stick with Dalaran.

Luckily, not all is completely lost. Much like with Shattrath before level 58, You can still get teleported or summoned up by a Mage or Warlock before level 74. Still, it's a strange little extra hoop Blizzard's having us leap through to get the to top.

I sure thought that we'd covered this before, but all my searching tells me that we haven't. So, since the past few weeks have been late endgame epics, here's a bit of awesomely husky loot -- if you haven't ever gotten this one, you definitely should.

Name: Cannonball Runner (Wowhead, Thottbot, Fishing)
Type: Rare Trinket
Damage/Speed: N/A (see below)
Abilities:

• Summons a cannon that will fire at enemies in front of you.
• Lasts for 10 seconds, with a 5 minute cooldown. Will reportedly attack enemies that aren't aggroed, so be careful dropping it in a crowded area.
• Fires about seven shots with an average of 50 damage each (though can also crit), so about 350 damage, depending on whatever you're shooting at.
• And of course, the name itself hearkens back to the famous Burt Reynolds epic, Cannonball Run.
• And the icon (a smiley-face adorned bomb) is great, though Blizzard has since reused it as a number of different bombs and grenades.
• And finally, it's one of the best trinkets in World of Warcraft.

How to Get It: You've got to drop Cannon Master Willey, hiding in the Scarlet Crusade's armory in the live side of Stratholme. He's down at the end of a hallway, and as you fight him, other people will show up, so one of your group has to sit on cannon duty and fire cannons at the bad guys that show up while the rest of you fight Willey. Down him, and the trinket will drop at about a 17% rate. At level 70, the whole instance is pretty much soloable (depending on your class skill and gear), so odds are that as long as you keep on top of things, you can probably make your way to him by yourself.

We'll have to see if Willey shows up in some form in the upcoming Caverns of Time version of Stratholme -- considering that Old Hillsbrad (with all of its familiar faces) is the most popular CoT instance, it's not hard to guess that he will.

Getting Rid of It: Sells for 1g 8s 50c, disenchants into a Large Brilliant Shard. Boom!

Between Arenas, V'Ming spends his time as a lock laughing ominously in AV, tanking Olm with his own minions and pondering troll fashion from Zul'Aman. He's recently started to plumb the depths of SSC with his 0/21/40 build and bragging about 8k shadow bolts.

With the current furore over patch 2.4, one may be hard-pressed to keep up with the latest news and developments, especially if you've got raid/ work/ school schedules to keep to and tax forms to struggle with. Ultimately, few of us really read through the patch notes line-by-line, often just skimming for parts that matter to us. As warlocks, we'd naturally be concerned with how patch 2.4 affects us - are we nerfed or buffed? Can warlocks ever not cause the world to end?

Allow this intrepid columnist to dive into the murky depths of patch 2.4, to surface with hopefully some pearls of wisdom that answer the hundred-dollar question: What does it mean for me?

For really busy warlocks, 2.4, in a nutshell, is a buff in terms of group and raid utility for warlocks.

... What would it be? As it is, warlocks already have a variety of demons for seemingly every occasion, yet in my mind's eye, I imagine warlocks being able to summon a much greater number than just 4 (or 5, depending on your talents). I close my eyes and envision a mad little gnome cackling as 5 or 10 minor demons come popping out of a portal he has just opened up. In fact, a demonology warlock in particular should be able to do everything he or she needed with the assistance of demons, is it not? It's true the Felguard is a nice pet -- but is he that nice?

So just for fun, let's play "imaginary abilities": what would you envision for walocks' evil little minions in the next expansion?

Blizzard strictly forbade any video or pictures of live gameplay during BlizzCon, so for fear of not being able to cover the whole thing for you guys, I stayed away from breaking that rule. But apparently Gameriot was not so rule-abiding, and they grabbed some shaky footage of the first dungeon we'll see in Northrend, Utgarde Keep.

They played the same parts I did on my walkthrough, including the gigantic furnace walls, new Vrykul race, a few "proto-drakes," and the first boss, the Warlock who summons some big Vrykul skellys throughout the fight. There's not a lot new to hear about if you've been reading everything so far, but if you weren't able to make it to BlizzCon, it'll be your first chance to see everything from Northrend's first 5man on video.

[ via Curse ]

Reader Quogar from Blackwing Lair says that one of his guild-mates was offering free summons to Ironforge one evening. When accepting the summon, here's where Quogar wound up. And, trust me, this is probably the least dangerous place you'll wind up when someone freely offers to summon you to any location. Warlocks can be very devious, and might summon you off cliffs, far underwater, or even into lava. This is my public service announcement for the day: be wary of freely offered summons, because you never know where they'll end up.

Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth or Outland that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! Or perhaps you'd just like to see more of your pics from Around Azeroth.

Recently, I wrote a post on Rogues having trade windows opened up on them without so much as a word. As I suspected, many other Rogues out there indeed have the same problem. Of course, many had their own ways of dealing with it like picking the box, but not hitting trade until there was a tip in the window. Another idea was just keeping all trades off in their options so that people couldn't open up trades with them in the first place. All of these are things that I've tried from time to time with varying levels of success.

What I didn't expect, however, was the sheer amount of people who jumped in and brought up the similar plights that Mages and Warlocks face on a daily basis. As I've got a L59 Warlock and a L61 Mage, trust me when I say that I completetly understand and appreciate what you all go through with the requests you get. I'm not even able to portal others to Shattrath yet on my Mage, but anytime I'm playing her, I almost immediately get asked to open a portal there for someone anyway. Now, nobody has opened a trade window on me without asking and grunted out "food/water" as yet, but I've definitely gotten the tells demanding that I make food or water for them, as opposed to asking nicely.

Everyone thinks it's so easy to be a warlock these days. Sure, we have dots that will kill you long after we ourselves have died to your teammates. Sure, we can have a pet that is essentially a small warrior attack you while we sip Foster's in the shade. Or we can ... we can ... I'm not exactly sure what the Destruction 41-point talent is because no one uses it. Some kind of AOE? Whatever. Anyway, the point is that life as a warlock has its annoyances. Take this conversation my level 51 lock, repairing her armor in Undercity, had with a level 16 warrior in Thunder Bluff today.

Warrior: can you please summon me to undercity?

Me (figuring the guy at least said please): Sorry, I don't have a group right now.

Warrior: how hard can it be to find a group in UC :P

Me (thinking I'm not going to find a group to summon this guy without payment): How much are you going to pay me?

Warrior: 0.00

Me: So basically, you want me to use my own soul shard and my own time to find a group so I can summon your lazy behind?

Warrior: um ... yeah

Me: Hell no. Walk.

The average warlock has this conversation many, many times before hitting 60, and an interminable number of times thereafter. In a raid, you have to summon stragglers, dispense healthstones, soulstone important people and make sure you have Curse of Elements up or your mages will eat you alive. Speaking of mages, they also have it rough when it comes to being bugged -- they have to portal people places and create food and water for the whole raid!

Warlocks, mages, how do you deal with the annoyance of random tells for "summons" or "wtr plz" when you're chilling in Ironforge?