It's a relatively painless Tuesday Morning this time around for those who play in what are the early morning hours at Blizzard HQ. This time, most US servers will just recieve a quick rolling restart at 5 AM PDT, about half an hour from now, which should result in no more than 15 minutes of downtime. However, there are some servers that will get 2 hours of downtime: Agamaggan, Azshara, Baelgun, Dark Iron, Detheroc, Emerald Dream, Greymane, Kalecgos, Lightninghoof, Maelstrom, Malfurion, Moonrunner, Nazjatar, Sargeras, Staghelm, Twisting Nether, Ursin, and Wildhammer.

Also, here's something that should please a lot of Australian players: Their realms won't get the rolling restarts until 5AM AEST -- which translates to noon PDT. That should translate to lots of time for night owls to finish their raids before the restarts kick them off.

So in that 15 minutes to 2 hours of down time you'll have to go through, or if you're stuck at school or work, here's a few WoW Insider articles from the last week that are worth checking out. First, last week's major news and views:

• The WoTLK Friends and Family Alpha is underway, and we have the leaked patch notes.
• A Vivendi earnings statement gave us the first real official word on WoTLK's expected release date.
• The Hunter Growl and Scare Beast changes from patch 2.4.2 didn't turn out so great after all.
• Raiders rejoice: M'uru got a little easier, and those nasty Archimonde and Eredar Twin bugs got a hotfix.
• Death and Taxes, the premiere US WoW raiding guild, disbanded. That set a few of us to pontificating on the problems of raid guild drama here and here.
• We covered a few more tidbits of WoTLK info, such as Death Knight "reruning."
• Check out sister site BigDownload's interview with Blizzard on that whole eSport thing.
• In Hybrid Theory, Alex soothes your fears about Death Knights taking your jobs.

If these aren't enough for you, there's more after the break.

Acerba of Cenarion Circle started a pretty fun discussion the other day on her server boards: What type of music would typify various races and cultures of Azeroth? Sure, we all have our soundtracks for when we get tired of the in-game music, and the in-game music itself often has various themes that show again and again music to represent various concepts, but thinking about what music your character would listen to or what sounds you might here around a bonfire at Razor Hill (Well, besides L70ETC) or in a fine mansion in Silvermoon City is a really fun exercise. I'm one who often creates soundtracks for my PnP and MMORPG characters alike in order to understand this, so I find it a useful exercise for us roleplayers, as well.

If your first time discovering Grim Batol was anything like mine, it ended in horrible, bloody, unexpected death. That experience sums up Grim Batol rather well. The fortress has stood roughly 250 years, give or take a couple decades, and has changed hands more than once during that time.

Before we get to Grim Batol itself, we need to take a look at a little piece of Dwarven history: The War of the Three Hammers. You see, the Dwarves of Azeroth, just a few hundred years ago, all carried one banner. They were the Dwarves of Ironforge, plain and simple. Their society was a large one, and their wise and powerful king Modimus Anvilmar was highly revered. Amongst the Dwarven society, though, there were three clans that stood above the rest. The Bronzebeard Clan, the Dark Iron Clan, and the Wildhammer Clan.

Each of these clans played a very specific role in the Kingdom. The Bronzebeard, led by Thane Madoran Bronzebeard, were the military arm of the mountain city. They were soldiers and defenders. They were the sword and the shield, and the clan closest to King Modimus Anvilmar. The Wildhammer, led by Thane Khadros Wildhammer, lived in the outlying regions of the Kingdom, in the... well, the wilds. Scouts, hunters, things of that sort. They held little real power within the city proper, and they didn't really like that. The Dark Irons, led by Thane Thaurissan, were mages and sorcerers. They were also jerks.

It's the little details around the World of Warcraft that surprise you sometime. Like this scene inside the Wildhammer Stronghold in Shadowmoon Valley. No, it's not the sight of Lyxis of Silverhand (who sent is this screenshot) that we find so fascinating, but the choice of artwork on the walls. And if you pay attention as you adventure around, you'll find that many interior settings are detailed right down to the art on the walls.

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.

Last night, in honor of today's patch, my guild leader restructured our guild. We've been having some tough times with motivation as of late, it the general consensus amongst the officers was that the guild members felt no progression as the guild was organized. We therefore sat down as a group in the Wildhammer Stronghold inn and took stock of what we had available.

A lot of great ideas came up, and one of them was what we implemented last night. The guild ranks are now focused around the Burning Crusade attunements, and each member receives a rank for which of the raid levels he is ready for. Although only a few of us (read one) are ready for Karazhan, the ranking system includes readiness for Black Temple. Yes, we are setting our sights high, but it's time to think big. If you don't have high expectations, how can anyone meet them?

As we were finishing up the planning of the new guild structure, I began to wonder about what other guilds do as far as ranks are concerned. In all my time playing World of Warcraft I have only been in one guild, so I can't use my experience to satiate my curiosity. Instead, I'll use yours. How are your guilds organized? What challenges do you face in keeping guilds motivated, and how do you tackle those challenges?