If you're like many of us, you've probably looked at the Achievement system coming to the game in patch 3.02, picked a few favorites, and considered getting some of them done before Wrath hits and all hell breaks loose. The last few weeks before an expansion tend to be relatively relaxed and quiet, leaving you with plenty of time to, say, Explore Kalimdor, visit zones you may have missed for 1500 Quests, or just convince more factions that you're really not so bad.

Some Achievements, however, are a little tougher, particularly those that will reward your character with a special title or mount. While I'm not sure I want to think about what something like For the Alliance! is going to be like, the one that I'm most concerned about is the Fishing Diplomat one. It's an an achievement needed for Accomplished Angler, and requires you to fish something up in both Orgrimmar and Stormwind. My main is a Tauren Druid, so fishing anything in Orgrimmar is a piece of cake. Stormwind, less so. While I can stealth into the city easily enough, fishing necessarily leaves you exposed for a period of 15-20 seconds. I don't think it'd bother me as much as it does if it weren't for the team of bored Alliance on my realm who typically camp quest objectives during holiday events. While I somehow doubt they've got the numbers or inclination to cover every inch of the Stormwind canals, I'm equally doubtful that my eight-foot cow's presence in the city will go unnoticed.

I don't really have that much to worry about compared to the Hordies going after Old Ironjaw (in Ironforge) or Alliance going after Old Crafty (in Orgrimmar) for the Old Ironjaw and Old Crafty achievements respectively (what sadist came up with the idea of having you fish for a 0.1% drop in an enemy city?), but one thing's certain: some achievements are going to be more taxing than others.

As you may have noticed in the latest patch, workers in Stormwind are busy building Stormwind Harbor, a relatively large addition that will give us a convenient boat dock to get up to Northrend. As an aside, is Stormwind going to be the Alliance jumping-off point for all expansions? It's already the most convenient capital to the Dark Portal, as well as (I think) the only city with trainers for all classes. Anyway, it's my favorite city, so I don't really mind, but still – when's Ironforge or poor Darnassus going to get some love?

What was I talking about? Oh right, I have here a beautiful gallery of screenshots of Stormwind Harbor, its boats, and a lighthouse that seems to be on the way out of the city. The Harbor will offer non-stop trips to the Borean Tundra in Northrend, as well as to Auberdine (the current boat in Menethil is being re-routed, and Menethil will now connect only to Theramore). This should make it much less painful for low-level Alliance characters to travel between the Eastern Kingdoms and Kalimdor – "no more Wetlands Deathflop," as one Blizzard CM put it.

I really like the look of the the boats, too, with the big paddle wheel and the gryphon prow. It's always nice to see a little more steampunk in my WoW. Come on in and check out the beautiful scenery, and thanks to Kevin from WoW Macros for providing all these lovely screenshots.

Episode 1 of Blizzard's new podcast, cunningly titled "Blizzcast," went live today. It's in two segments, one hosted by CM Karune and featuring Blizz artist extraordinaire (and, in fact, art director) Samwise Didier, and the second hosted by CM Drysc and featuring Jeff "Tigole" Kaplan. This installment is audio-only, but they promise that future episodes will include video as well. For now you can hear the podcast or read a transcript of it, and check out some Samwise art, at Blizzard's site. A more extensive overview is forthcoming, but for now, I imagine what you really care about is Jeff Kaplan's hints for the upcoming patch 2.4:

• The Sunwell raid is tuned for players in T6 gear, but there is no attunement.
• The Sunwell faction, called Shattered Sun Offensive, is a joint effort by Aldor and Scryer to drive the Burning Legion out from the Sunwell Plateau. Jeff calls it "the culmination of the Aldor and Scryer storyline." Many Aldor/Scryer NPCs in Shattrath will be changed to SSO NPCs.
• SW25 gear will be a Tier 7, but the looks will not be class-specific; the example he gives is that the Pally plate and the Warrior plate will be differently-colored versions of the same models -- but you can, apparently, rest assured that the itemization will be better than AQ40.
• The 5-man dungeon will be about as hard as Shadow Labyrinth or Shattered Halls. There are four bosses. On normal mode, the first three drop ilvl 110 blues (normal dungeon blues), but the last boss drops an ilvl 115 epic, on par with a lower-level Karazhan epic. In heroic, the first three bosses drop ilvl 115 epics, and the last boss drops an item on the level of Prince Malchezzar's drops. Buffing the loot like this means it will still be relevant for people that have been playing BC for a while now, and also it gives newcomers a chance to catch up.
  

As one more bonus, Blizzard is giving away 12 Logitech 5.1 speaker sets and Starcraft II hats to lucky folks who write feedback emails about the podcast to them; details on this are at the Blizzcast home page. I for one really enjoyed hearing the voices behind some of the avatars I see every day, and of course hearing some new details about 2.4. Keep it up, Blizzcasters!

World of Raids is reporting on a recent interview the German site WoWszene got with J. Allen Brack, lead producer for Wrath of the Lich King. While there isn't much in the way of new Wrath-related info in it, there is one bit that makes me happy: they plan on getting patch 2.4 onto PTRs before the year is out, which gives them less than a month and a half.

So far, we don't know a lot of what's coming in 2.4. Here's what we do know:

• New area: Sunwell Isle, situated north of Eversong Woods, and featuring:
  
• A 25-man raid, probably with Kil'jaeden as the final boss, with better loot than the T6 raids
  
• Blizzard have said that a legendary bow will drop here
• A 5-man instance, with normal and heroic modes
  
• New daily quests
• Improved combat log
• We should probably see that trainable Ice Block by 2.4, although it may come sooner