Teech from Cenarion Circle penned a brief note on the forums today about the utter agony of farming Timbermaw Hold reputation at level 70. It seems like a lot of people are revisiting this particular rep grind in the interest of obtaining "The Diplomat" title and Achievement in Wrath, for which you need to be Exalted with Sporereggar, the Timbermaw, and the Mag'har/Kurenai. I'm giving some thought to doing it myself because I've already gotten to exalted with Sporereggar and the Mag'har on my main, but Timbermaw is...something else entirely. As a matter of fact, Timbermaw makes no sense. I can understand getting a Diplomat title for being an Alliance or Horde liasion to the embattled peoples of Outland no matter how bad their sense of tabard design, but someone's going to have to explain to me how committing genocide on behalf of a pissed-off subgroup of bears in loincloths does anything to advance the cause of diplomacy in Azeroth.

Why are we so willing to believe the story being peddled by the first furbolg we see in Felwood? For all we know there's nothing wrong with the other furbolg tribes that some micro-lending couldn't cure. And let's face, it, there are other factions in the game for whom both the Alliance and Horde would be much better served by maintaining close diplomatic ties. Take the Consortium, for example. They ask you to lay waste to their colleagues all the time, but at least everyone concerned makes a buck off of it. What do the Timbermaw have to offer but a tunnel that you can fly over? Isn't the national interest of the Horde or Alliance better served by pursuing ties to factions with lots of money or weapons, or at least a massive grudge against things we already hate, rather than involving ourselves in some pointless internecine spat among NPC's whose death animation makes me squirm?

Yeah, I might just be mad I have to kill so many of them. I'll grant that the dubious honor of most legendarily awful rep grind of all time still seems to belong to the Wintersaber Trainers (although the Cenarion Circle is also getting a lot of grief in the thread), but at least the Trainers' rep isn't linked to an amusingly ironic new title. Now if you'll pardon me, I have to go slaughter another several dozen bear men in the interests of social justice for...I'm not sure. Other bears who claim it's the right thing to do. But I get something out of it anyhow, and that makes me an ambassadorial hero.

While Death Knights start at 55, by the time they get out of the Ebon Hold, which is the instanced newbie zone that delivers the epic story of how a Death Knight becomes a Death Knight, they should be level 57 with a few bubbles in. Level 57 is pretty cool, but it's far from the level 68 or so you'll need to get to Northrend, and it's not even the level 58 that most people consider the minimum for heading to Outland. So, what's a fresh Death Knight to do?

I'm taking my Beta Deathknight to Winterspring to start with. I figure that between Everlook, Starfall Village to the north, and Donova Snowden to the west, I should be able to get a good, solid mix of quests that'll allow me to hit 58 and decide if I'm ready for Outland -- Not to mention a Mechanical Yeti.

Of course, there's other options as well. Eastern Plaguelands offers the chance to use Rune of Lichbane and mess up a bunch of undead in the name of the Argent Dawn, plus you can have your 70 collect Savage Fronds, Bone Fragments, Cores of Elements, Dark Iron Scraps, and Crypt Fiend Parts for some quick experience as well.

With a good group, you could also hit up Scholomance and Stratholme for some revenge against the Scourge, maybe grabbing some Deathcharger's Reins or a Barov Peasant Caller along the way. Or you could trust in the power of the imba and try hitting Hellfire Peninsula straight up at 57.

Then again, this is Beta, so they could always just switch things up, add a few more levels gained in Ebon Hold, maybe. Still, it's likely we'll still have a while to go before we can hit all the new stuff, regardless. So if you're rolling a Death Knight, how are you planning to start the level grind?

15 Minutes of Fame is our look at World of Warcraft players of all shapes and sizes – from the renowned to the relatively anonymous, the remarkable to the player next door. Tip us off to players you'd like to hear more about at 15minutesoffame (at) wowinsider (dot) com.

For all the WoW players who sink into Azeroth to escape the travails of the world outside are others who seem set ablaze by the ideas, energy and connections sparked during their gaming. Among the inspired: Aislinana of Cenarion Circle, whose casual interest in assembling a sweet character portrait of a guildmate has morphed into a growing passion, with a growing fan base clamoring for their own portraits.

15 Minutes of Fame: Tell us how you got started doing character portraits – because you're not actually a professional artist or long-time hobbyist, are you?
Aislinana: Well, we were hanging around in Black Temple after a raid finished up, so I snapped a screen cap of my friend's priest, Kallindril, and said I'd spruce it up in Photoshop. Little did I know that it was going to turn into an obsession for me. I mean, I've always loved taking screenshots. I take them all the time to capture something awesome looking, much like I do with my own digital camera. So I've had an eye for this stuff. I just started to retouch/edit and then eventually started painting in effects in Photoshop.

Testers are reporting on the official PTR forums that the gains for Wintersaber Trainers reputation have been drastically increased. This Alliance-only grind has long been the worst in the game, with quests originally rewarding 50 reputation points at a time.

Considering the fact that players start at neutral with the faction and receive their one and only reward at exalted reputation, that's about 42,000 points to earn (or about 840 quests to complete) without any motivational incentives gained along the way. It retained this infamous status even when the reputation gain was raised to 75 points in patch 2.0.1, but now it has reportedly been raised even further to 250 points for each quest completed.

Befitting the grueling nature of the grind, there has been a lot of solidarity between those undertaking it, inspiring "Wintersaber Support Group" threads on the WoW forums for as long as I can remember. Understandably, a lot of the players that have already earned their "stripes" are concerned that their dearly won Winterspring Frostsaber mount will become more common, thus lowering its uniqueness and invalidating their hard work. On the other hand, many players, like myself, are relieved that this grind has finally become realistically achievable. Where do your opinions lie on this issue?

Hot on the heels of tomorrow's expected 2.2 release, Neth has posted the short-but-sweet 2.2.2 patch notes, which include Brewfest and Hallow's End, featuring lots of new seasonal rewards and quests. As we've said before, the fact that both of these holidays are coming up quick means we can't be more than one or two weeks away from this patch's release.

And the other interesting feature of this patch is the addition of quite a few new graveyards all over Old Azeroth. Southern Barrens, Western Plaguelands, Alterac Mountains, Searing Gorge and the Badlands are all getting extra graveyards (there's no indication whether they're Horde or Alliance specific or otherwise), and Tanaris, Winterspring, Stonetalon and Un'Goro are all getting two.

Wow. That should significantly speed things up in Un'Goro, Tanaris, and the Southern Barrens especially, since I have less-than-fond memories of super-long corpse runs there. Badlands, too, was pretty maddening, and while the long corpse run wasn't the only reason most players aren't big fans of Uldaman, it was definitely a reason for that. This is no doubt part of Blizzard's aim to speed up levels 1-60 for players. This alone, of course, doesn't exactly make me want to go back and run another alt through (only new content would do that), but at least when we do run another alt through, it'll be a little easier.

A poster to the official forums complained (they're just so good at complaining!) that Northrend is "supposed to be completely covered in snow and ice," but so far there hasn't been enough of either in the screenshots for the Wrath of the Lich King expansion. Bornakk responded: "While we have no plans for Northrend to appear like an island of paradise, we do want the zones to bring a wide variety of scenery and environments for all players to enjoy. Making a continent one big block of ice didn't seem to fit with this ideology too well."

Several posters came right back at him though, and while no one wanted to go through a whole continent that was just like Winterspring, the general feedback going Blizzard's way was to say: less chill, more freeze. One poster put it well: "I was hoping that maybe the Devs would actually try and I bet if they wanted they could make a plethora of breathtaking Ice and Snow environments that would be much more interesting than Winterspring."

When I read that, my mind leaped with images of giant ice structures protruding from the earth, refracting sunlight as you looked at them. It was a beautiful image, not at all like Winterspring, and possibly variable enough for one or two zones.... but 10? 10 whole zones of different ice and snow environments? How in the world could one avoid the overwhelming dominance of the color white? Where would all the variety be without some areas that have... less freeze and more chill?

Of course a lot of Blizzard's landscaping work for the expansion is probably already planned out, but as things stand I'd imagine it's not too late for a little bit of player input to influence just how icy Northrend actually is. What's your take? Can you describe some significantly different environments that don't look like Winterspring?

A few weeks ago on Phat Loot Phriday, I wrote about the Essence of Eranikus, a cool little trinket from the dragon in Sunken Temple. It's actually part of an unfinished questline-- a few steps after you get the gem from Eranikus, the questline ends in Winterspring with no explanation as to what happened with the rest of the story. Like many players (including myself), Falandan wants to know if Blizzard has any plans to finish up this series of quests.

Tseric answers on the forums, and says that while Blizz is leaving their option open, the main problem with returning to unfinished quests (The Missing Diplomat/King of Stormwind is another) is that they'd have players of a high level doing low level quests. Either that, or they'd have to interrupt the normal leveling game, and you'd be doing quests in the same line with ten (or more) levels between them.

But while that's an obstacle Blizzard is considering, apparently it's not going to stop them from revisiting some old questlines: reader anobolic (thanks!) sends a link to this flickr account, with what looks like an extension of the Quel'serrar questline!

If you've got Quel'serrar now (not sure yet if Blizzard will give it back to you if you've sold or destroyed it for some reason), you'll be able to do another set of quests (rumored to involve another dragon, and maybe even an Undead Onyxia-- she's back?!?) that will either get you the Daughter of Quel'serrar (more purple for paladins), the Son of Quel'serrar (for warriors), or, if you're the first person on the server to complete the quest, Quel'serrar Reborn (and apparently you get a "dragonslayer" title with that as well). Oh, and there's also a rumor of a Quel'serrar shield to come. Very cool! Of course, all this is rumor so far-- it's not even certain that this is coming in patch 2.1 is real at all (see Update) -- but if Blizzard is rewarding those who worked for the High Blade with another questline to work through, it's a good sign that we might see updates to the old unfinished ones as well.

Update: Commenters are casting doubt on the authenticity of the pictures. Stuff like this could be easily photoshopped, and we have no other source for it, so take the info about Quel'serrar with a grain of salt.

Update2: Commenter Leggend (thanks!) says this is proof the images were just adjusted in Photoshop. Oh well. Maybe someday Blizzard will actually finish off some of these old questlines.

Immelmann sends in this screenshot of a quest event in Winterspring. I'm not familiar with the quest itself, but I cannot help but be impressed by a mysterious floating, glowy thing. (Ooh, shiny!)

Do you have a unique shot of Azeroth that you'd like to show off to the rest of the world? Tell us about it by e-mailing aroundazeroth@gmail.com! You can attach a picture file or send us a link to one -- and don't worry about formatting, we'll take care of that part. And don't forget about this week's Around Azeroth caption contest -- we're taking submissions all week and will pick the best of them to show off next Monday!