I'm actually a little excited. Phase 2 of the 2008 World of Warcraft Arena Tournament has begun! Start your engines and speculations now, folks -- which comps will make it to the top this time? Are we going to see a winner that looks like Frag Dominant? Or will the new Phase 2 winners basically be the same as Phase 1's winners?

Vhairi's been tracking the performance of classes in the tournament so far. For the last week or two, this round's competitors have been honing strategies, experimenting with comps, and switching things around a lot. Now that the dust has settled, teams are what they are. As a result, the data should be fairly meaningful again pretty quickly, and hopefully Vhairi will put out another update.

I can't wait to see how the class performance distribution will look in Phase 2 -- it might teach us something more about what to expect in WotLK for class balance. I don't think Phase 2 will be much different from Phase 1 however -- a lack of holy Pallies, scarcity of Hunters and Mages, and so on.

WoW Radio (home of our increasingly popular podcast) sends along a note that they've announced another round of WoW Idol, a contest to find the best WoW-related song their listeners can come up with. They're looking for both original work, and WoW parodies of popular songs, and the deadline is Friday the 18th of January. After that, the songs will be posted on their site (and played on air), and the finalists will be narrowed down to five winners, including three critics' choices, one popular choice, and a worst/most embarrassing winner. Sounds like a lot of fun (get it? "sounds"? ha!).

And the prizes have notably improved from the last go-around-- you could win a signed poster, t-shirts, and everyone (including the worst winner) gets a BlizzCon beta key/murloc suit card. Hot! They're looking for songs 3-5 minutes long and related to World of Warcraft in some way-- send your submission to "wowidol AT wcradio dot com".

Can't wait to hear the entries-- if any of them happen to be related to WoW Insider, we'll have to ask WoW Radio to let us play them on our podcast as well. If you plan to enter, good luck!

First off, I'd like to thank everyone who participated in our tabard design contest! We have some excellent entries, which the WoW Insider staff has combed through for the best of the best -- and now it's your turn! I know we had a tough time narrowing things down to ten finalists -- every entry would have made a lovely tabard. (If you don't believe me, check out our gallery of entries, including commentary from some of the designers.)Take a look at our finalists and pick the one you'd like to see as the official It came from the Blog tabard! Polls will be open for 48 hours, so you have until Monday at 9:00 AM EST to get your vote in. And remember, the top three winners get to take home a "I'm Only Here Because My Server Is Down" t-shirt! Voting, after the jump!