Many moons back, I looked at some wishes that warlocks had to improve our lot (but didn't break the game). We're now here in this pre-expansion funk, where players are generally more interested in things to come than things that are. So let us see if any of our wishes will be granted with the Wrath beta changes.

Michael did an excellent analysis of the first beta patch notes for warlocks, and he'll be following that up with a look at the new talent trees and spells. At this stage of development, it's still too early to characterize the changes as an overall class buff or nerf, but one thing's for certain: Blizzard is shaking up our game.

The changes will break some cookie-cutter specs, namely those that relied on Demonic Sacrifice and Soul Link. Shaking up the so-called "best" builds that players have become dependent on, is always a good thing to keep things fresh and interesting.

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To celebrate the kick-off of HKO-Insider, Insider Trader will be doing a bonus column this week! As the closed beta has only just been put in the works, there are understandably few details floating around.

Currently, we have confirmed at least the following professions:

• Mining.
• Gathering fruit from the wild.
• Tailoring.
• Furniture-crafting.
• Farming.
• Cooking.
• House-building.
  

This week we will speculate on what we might see, and compose a wishlist for what we would like to see. Join us on Friday as we resume our normal schedule and delve deeper into the concept of mining as a profession, building on today's overview as well as player feedback.

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.

The luckier ones among us would have some or most of our Christmas wishes granted yesterday, especially wishes that can be fulfilled at your friendly neighborhood mall - no, your presents are not made by elves in the North Pole.

Some altruistic individuals might have wished for something more nebulous like "world peace". But perhaps nothing feels more nebulous than wishes for improving the Warlock class; world peace might happen sooner than some Warlock wishes in this thread!

Combing through the current 52 pages of the thread, and leaving out complaints and unrealistic requests that will obviously upset class balance, I've come up with this (hopefully) definitive wishlist for warlocks.

Since we last profiled the database site, WoWDigger.com, it has evolved into more than just a WoWHead clone. I found new functions that were helpful in planning my online activities.

Using their downloadable client, you can create an Armory-like page of your character on the site. Then you can create a Wishlist duplicate template of your equipped gear and swap in pieces that you want to acquire to see exactly how it affects your stats, resists, damage ratios, mp5, crit chance, defense, etc. Great for planning on how to get that last bit of resilience to hit the cap or balancing your +heal and +spell damage.

Another function I like is the personalized quest page. You now have an offline list of all the quests in your quest log. Plan your next step to complete the quest and read up on any strats you'll need to know beforehand. Also, the site tracks all your reputation gains so you'll know how close you are to the next rep level for every faction in the game.

If you're like me and enjoy extensive planning and researching offline, I recommend checking out the latest improvements to WoWDigger. With CTProfiles down for now, its a great alternative. If anyone knows of other sites that provide similar services, feel free to list them in the comments.

Cryptos posts on the forums about a subject very near and dear to my heart: loot whining. It is one of my great flaws that whenever I get close to a boss that I know drops something I really want, I can't help but share my excitement with my fellow party members, and sometimes (more often then not, unfortunately for them) my guild members. I'm sorry to say that I'm the guy he's talking about-- I'm the guy that is about to fight Murmur telling the guild, "man I sure hope my pretty dress drops." And it's a sign of how amazing my guild really is that they put up with me talking about it all the time.

But then again, loot is basically why we play the game in the first place. Shouldn't I, and players like me, be able to share with our fellow players what loot we're going for, to let them in on the stuff we hope we get? Is it right for this GM to actually threaten to disenchant a piece of loot, just because someone says they want it?

I definitely agree it can go over the top-- one of my pet peeves is people who join a PUG and try to "reserve" not-yet-dropped items, especially when there are others in the party who would obviously roll on it. And for my part, I've already noticed that I should keep my loot hopes to myself-- my guild doesn't really care about me getting every little upgrade I want. But good loot is the reason why many of us play this game, and so it's only expected that we should be excited at the prospect of getting it, and want to share that with fellow players.