Tipster Graffias pointed out an exciting find in the latest leaked Alpha files for WoTLK: An Icon for a Brewfest Kodo. You may recall that last year's Brewfest included a Ram mount that was purchasable with tickets by both sides, allowing the Horde very easy access to an Alliance mount with a few days of grinding for Brewfest Prize Tickets. Many Alliance weren't happy with this, annoyed that the Horde got such easy access to an Alliance mount without having to kill Baron Rivendare or a Troll a couple hundred times. Bornakk decided that the best way to answer this criticism would be by promising the Alliance that the Horde would be getting access to yet another previously alliance-only mount skin in the Cenarion War Hippogryph. Of course, Kisirani, being as awesome as she is, later said that we should have patience and things would work out in the end.

Listening to the words of the world designer seem to have paid off, as it looks like the Dwarves are going to turn the tables on the Goblins this year and steal some Kodos from them. I can finally fulfill my dream of owning my very own Kodo. My Night Elf Druid is from Kalimdor after all, and you would think there would be some Night Elves who decided to domesticate Kodos as beasts of burden too.

But really, as much as I am looking forward to grabbing myself a Kodo (and seeing a tiny Gnome riding around on a huge beast of burden), what's really exciting is this thought: If the Brewfest is in late September to early October, does that mean Blizzard is planning to give us WoTLK by September, Brewfest Kodo and all?

Many of those who were waiting to turn in their decks at the Darkmoon Faire may have to wait another month. It's been changed now, but the official events calendar for the faire showed it as coming from March 10th-16th this month, when it actually showed up in game from March 3rd-9th. When one of the people who was counting on that March 10th date posted a thread wondering what had happened, world events designer Kisirani posted. She admitted that, yes, the calendar was in error, and the faire has come and gone for the month.

Unfortunately, she also went on to say that there's not really a way to get people their decks, and it's looking likely that they'll have to wait for April. She's gone over future dates to make sure they're correct, but spawning a turn-in NPC or allowing people to petition a GM for a deck turn in would be, she says, a logistical nightmare. It looks like the only option Kisirani and her team are willing to consider is respawning the faire for the week, but even that is still up in the air.

Hopefully, if you had a deck waiting to turn in, or just wanted to stock up on Spiced Beef Jerky, you thought to check last week. If not, we'll have to see if the dev team decides that the calendar error deserves allowing everyone a second chance to experience the faire this month.

UPDATE: It looks like Kisirani came through for us. The Darkmoon Faire will be up after tomorrow's maintenance!

We've known for a while now that the Sunwell Plateau would start small, with more bosses being unlocked along the way until you could finally face down Kil'jaedan himself to prevent him from coming into this world. But with 2.4 out on the PTRs, the question becomes, how do you start unlocking the plateau?

The answer comes in a form of a drop off each of the bosses inside the instance: The Essence of Immortals. With this essence, the mages of the Shattered Sun Offensive are able to bring down the magical gates inside the Plateau, three in all, that block access to Kil'jaedan himself.

Zom over on the forums asks: what's your favorite WoW holiday? And the response is extra special because it's by Kisirani, who, you may know, is actually Blizzard's World Event Designer-- him showing up in your thread about holidays is kind of like God showing up on a thread about your favorite mountain range.

Kisirani asks specifically for constructive, reasoned posts, but c'mon, he's asking on the WoW forums. Fortunately, this site is not the WoW forums, and our comments are more than capable of giving constructive and reasoned.. well...

I kid! Tell the guy what your favorite WoW holiday is, whether it be the free epics of Hallow's End or the ticket grinding of Brewfest, and maybe the upcoming updates to Nobelgarden (we hope) will incorporate some of your constructive and well-reasoned ideas!

Thanks, Joshua!

Blizzard has just recently opened a new server over in the EU realms called Molten Core, and not only are they already seeing queues on there (due to all the migration), but Blizzard is thinking about opening the gates of AQ for them.

Which strikes us as a little sad. Admittedly, the Gates of Ahn'Qiraj is a huge undertaking, and it would likely take a long time for the players on the new realm to get the War Effort over and done with (and surely Blizzard wouldn't want that competing for attention with any World Events planned for the next expansion). And even after the gates open, players can still complete that giant quest to get the Scepter anyway (just as they can right now on any other live realm). And as Blizzard says, most of these incoming players are coming from realms where the gates are open already anyway.

But it's still a little sad that Blizzard is stepping in to open the gates automatically rather than leaving the task up to the players. Just like all of the old world instances, Blizzard seems more than happy to leave all their old content and hard work behind, and instead focus players on what's coming out in the future.

There's a discussion going down on the forums about what many consider to be the most exciting part of MMO games, including World of Warcraft-- world events. As many drawbacks as there were to the AQ events, no one can argue that they didn't affect everyone in the World-- everyone was able to step up and help the war effort, and even though everyone didn't fit in Silithus, everyone came across some of the invaders that spread across the world. While the Naxx event was that way as well, we haven't really seen anything else on that scale even in this, the largest MMO ever. And let's not forget that since Burning Crusade was released, we're dealing with a lot more people-- there are huge amounts of the population who have never seen a world event yet.

Which makes it all the more likely that we will see a big one for Wrath of the Lich King. Bornakk says that while Blizzard realizes that a lot needs to go into creating a big world event, they've also learned a lot from Brewfest and the Hallow's End events about how to both tune the scale and get players involved. But Blizzard still wants to do a big one, and from what we heard at BlizzCon, they're going to come up with a reason for Alliance and Horde to head up to Northrend after Arthas.

My guess? Arthas is going to become a threat again-- he'll invade Undercity, or bomb Darnassus, or somehow attack our world. And for the first time that I can think of since the game has started, we're going to actually lose something-- an NPC, a city (at the very least, Dalaran) or something else. For all of the fighting going on in the world of Warcraft, it hasn't yet changed that much. And I think that with the next expansion, Blizzard is looking to have Arthas shake things up a bit.