I love you, WotlkWiki, I really do. First you bring us specifics on Inscription, and now we get the effects of the new potions, elixirs, and flasks that your friendly neighborhood alchemist will be cooking up in the frosty north. We got all the names for these items a few days ago, along with details on the transmutations (I'll take any excuse to make a pretty diagram), but the effects of them had not yet come to light, until now.

There's nothing stunning, I'm afraid; more like some nice upgrades to current favorites. But I certainly expect be popping flasks and pots in Naxx at least as much as I currently am in Zul'Aman. Anyway, let's see what we've got. I'll compare to the BC or old-world versions where appropriate.

This week, Insider Trader will be taking a further look into the future of professions in World of Warcraft.

Although Wrath of the Lich King is still only in alpha testing, what little we do know, though it might change, helps us anticipate the direction Blizzard is taking.

In fact, we can even begin to see what the army of Death Knight Inscribers might take as their second profession, which will undoubtedly have repercussions on the market.

Not only will the amount of competition skyrocket, but opportunities to make a buck selling to lazy Death Knights will abound.

For these and more details, head on through the break.

This past Monday, June 23, The WotLK Information Wiki relaunched on a new web host after having been pulled down by a Cease and Desist order from Blizzard. Darkside, one of the admins for the WotLK Information Wiki, gave an interview to Medros over at All Things Azeroth to explain what happened. The interview was conducted as part of Medros' podcast Episode 53. Some highlights from the interview include:

• Most of the information that the alpha wiki provides is a result of file and image extraction from Blizzard's publically-available alpha client.
• The alpha client files contain all the information on the spells, creatures and environments to be tested and new things are added or subtracted each time the alpha is patched.
• The alpha wiki folks set up a "sandbox" where they could fly through the new locations and spawn creatures for screenshots.
• A small portion of the WotLK info -- some screenshots, for example -- has come from Blizzard employees under non-disclosure agreements the identities of whom the alpha wiki admins protect.
• Blizzard, Vivendi, and Activision IP addresses had visited the wiki frequently since it began.
  
• The Cease and Desist order from Blizzard arrived last Friday, June 20. Over the weekend the WotLK wiki admins tried several ways to appease the lawyers and eventually settled on moving to a new web host.
• The wiki's readership is approximately 200,000 page views per day.

Go to All Things Azeroth to hear the rest of the interview. Make sure you listen to the first few minutes of the podcast to hear a very humorous and well-sung parody of Johnny Cash's Folsom Prison Blues called Pugging Kara Blues.

[Thanks, Matticus and uber.]

Don't count the WotLK Wiki out yet -- after going down late last week due to a suspected cease-and-desist order from Blizzard's lawyers (now confirmed), they have returned with a completely different host and all the information from the leaked Alpha they were originally hosting. They say that their original wiki hosts, Wikidot, were extremely supportive on both the traffic and legal fronts, as they upgraded their servers just to keep the site up, and originally did help with legal troubles. When Vivendi Universal took legal action against their ISP, however, Wikidot had to fold, and the wiki has now moved hosts to wotlkwiki.info.

Last week, there was also mention that the C&D didn't ask them to remove all information, only "over-the-line" info, such as screenshots or video. But apparently that clause doesn't apply to the new host -- there are still screenshots all over the site, and though Vivendi has pulled video from YouTube before, it's still there as well.

Of course, any C&D sent to the old site would still apply to the new one -- it's just a question now of whether the wiki's new host will comply with Vivendi's demands (the wiki's creators sound very sure that they won't). And after that, it'll be up to Vivendi to determine how far they want to take this -- if they really feel that having this leaked information on that site has hurt them in a justifable way, there is a possibility that an actual lawsuit could be issued, and if this escalates even further, the two parties could eventually end up in court. As always, we'll be watching to see what happenes.