Is WoW really player friendly? Tobold doesn't seem to think so. Says he, there's a lot of things that it doesn't tell you or you can miss the first time around, such as spending talent points, and that at the end game, he constantly has to check outside sites to figure out what he needs to grind to get certain drops and recipes. WoW does things better than most other MMORPGs, he says, but it is far from perfect.

But, me, I'm not sure he has it quite right.

Tactial mentions on the forums that all of the Rogues (in fact, this is true about almost everyone) are still in Tier 4. When Burning Crusade first came out and we all reached 70, Tier 4 was where it was at -- some people were excited about being in Tier 4, even if they hadn't earned it yet. But nowadays, Tier 4 ain't that great, and yet all of our forum icons shows us in the (now old) armor.

Drysc does say that the Armory is a click away from the forum icons, but surely Blizzard could take an afternoon and code a little customization into the icons. It seems like everyone else can render icons out of game -- why can't they? There is some good news for those looking for a forum icon update, though: Drysc says that when we're all level 80, we'll probably have new icons yet again, with shiny T7 on our characters.

Which will be great -- until a few big content patches after Wrath, when T9 will be out and we'll all be whining that we're still dressed in T7. Thus goes the circle, the circle of life.

Thottbot and Wowhead, two of the most popular WoW database sites, have been having a few problems with ads lately. There was that brief issue with the trojan in a banner last month, and also apparently some rather irritating ads with flashing and sound have been showing up lately (and I think we can all agree that ads with sound are evil). But, like much of the Internet, these sites are kept free for us because they are ad-supported, so what can they do? Well, they've gone on advertising strike.

Gamers on the Street logs onto U.S. servers to get the word from the front on what's going on in and around the World of Warcraft.

When you can't log in to World of Warcraft, do you get your fix from game sites instead? Gamers on the Street visited with two chatty young players from Zul'jin this morning about their WoW reading and research habits. Deathrowcame (70 Undead Warlock) and Docevil (70 Undead Rogue) were both on alts when we met up, but both popped over to Orgrimmar on their 70s to finish our conversation and take a group shot, as well as to share a few tidbits about life on Zul'Jin.

Be sure to drop by the comments at the end of the article and share your own favorite sites and sources.

Gamers on the Street: Hi guys, thanks for sharing. We're curious about people who like to read and research their characters and game info a lot. Are you both the studious type?
Deathrowcame: Yeah, I am. I got a 70 'lock that I bought, so I have to research it – no, I'm joking,. LOL
Docevil: I read up on what abilities I can get and what the easiest specialization is to use to level.
Deathrowcame: I surf wowhead and thottbot daily to research gear for my level and class and what quest my class should do.

You've probably noticed that we use Wowhead to embed item, spell, talent, and quest tooltips in articles here, and some of you use the same functionality on your own blogs. Wowhead's codeslinger Skosiris has made a change in the way this is handled, and that change necessitates a small update in the code needed to produce those tooltips. All you have to do is change the line "<script src="http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js"></script>" to "<script src="http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js?lol"></script>" wherever you have it in your code; this will force the users to reload the JavaScript so they're not running an out-of-date version.

If your own site is not powered by Wowhead, but would like it to be, it's as easy as adding "<script src="http://www.wowhead.com/widgets/power.js?lol"></script>" anywhere in your page code. If you do that, all relevant links pointing to Wowhead will get tooltips. Nifty, eh?

Last week, Insider Trader began the journey from 300 to 375 jewelcrafting skill. While we were able to avoid using recipes that required faction reputation or that had to be farmed, the cheapest methods to 375 from about 365 may require a bit more effort to obtain.

If you are like so many other craftsmen, stuck with 375 seeming far away and expensive, then carry on through the break to examine ways to not only maximize your skills, but to attempt to make a profit while doing so, rather than running on a loss.

Featuring several distinct ways to reach 375, you will find that you have many choices to suit your own needs, your guild's needs, and your server's market. In addition, I've put together some links for further reading that you should find helpful.

Wowhead has gone live with a few new updates to brighten up your April Fool's day, and help you get the pink residue of Hello Kitty out of your eyeballs with some of their tasteful black (just don't check their front page).

• The new 3D system I wrote about previously has gone live, featuring improved quality, NPC models, armor models, and the ability to preview items on any race or gender character model.
• Quest tooltips are now supported for sites powered by Wowhead, which includes us. This allows me to mention, for instance, that Sunfury Attack Plans is a good quest to group up for, since the Plans are a group drop.
• Most NPCs now have a tab listing their abilities. A few NPCs are missing them due to a couple of reasons: no data has been collected on them yet (e.g. Techbot), or there are two (or more) mobs with the same name (e.g. Kael'Thas). This latter difficulty has been fixed, and NPCs affected by it should have abilities listed the next time Wowhead parses data.
  

This last one is what I'm most excited about. It's nice to be able to see what a boss (or just a random mob) can do ahead of time, or, in the inverse, to see what mobs use a given ability. If this had been around a while back, I wouldn't have gotten all excited about Holyform, since I would have been able to tell right away it was just used by some Sunwell trash mob.

Yes, it's only midnight, and already the wackiness has started. These people just couldn't wait to do something a little silly on the first day of April.

• Reader Tim let us know that Baron Soosdon has quit his job at Machinima.com and stopped making machinima in general. He's said goodbye with (what else?) a Linkin Park video.
• WoWWiki has apparently switched places with the Guild Wars wiki, and vice versa. Make sure to check out their news section, where they mix up Guild Wars news with WoW news. Have you heard about the CM leaving, or the upcoming sequel?
• Wowhead's site, as you can see above, looks strangely familiar (thanks to everyone who sent this in).

More to come for sure. Don't believe anything you read today (unless you read it here on WoW Insider, of course).

Patch 2.4 has been upon as for almost a week now, and that's long enough for Wowhead to have collected reliable data on some of the interesting new things in the patch. Here's what I've noticed, leading off with what is (to my mind) the most interesting piece of information:

• Shattered Sun Supplies have a 10% chance to contain a Badge of Justice
• Wretched Fiends and Wretched Devourers each have a 30% chance to drop Mana Remnants for "Arm the Wards." Though this is probably reduced a bit by players who kill the Wretched without having the quest, I think 30% is close to the true drop rate (based on my own observation).

I guess that's it, really; the numbers on Bash'ir Phasing Device, Nether Residue, and Sunfury Attack Plans are hopelessly diluted by old and non-quest data, so we may never know true drop rates for those. Still, I'm glad to know about that 10% chance for a Badge. It's lower than I'd thought it would be, but I can understand why they would want to make it take a while for solo-only players to earn awesome epics.

For comparison, I checked WOWDB and Thottbot. WOWDB gave 9.2% for the Badge, which is similar, and 98% (!) on the Mana Remnants, which is clearly wrong. Thottbot says 9% on the Badge, and 27% on the Remnants.

A couple of months back, we relayed that Wowhead gained 3D models. Now, they're set to become better. We mentioned in the previous post that player models were in the works, and I'm here to bring you an exclusive preview. Users will be able to see items on any race and gender character model, so if you're trying to figure out how those boots look on a female Tauren, you're in luck (although it's a good bet that they'll look odd). Wowhead sister site Thottbot will be receiving this improvement as well.

Competitor WOWDB has had the ability to preview items on a character model since they launched a bit over a month ago, tying into their profile system. However, they seem to lack Wowhead's impressive high-quality mode.

In fact, the quality of Wowhead's 3D renders will be increased in the upcoming update, especially in the high-quality Java version. See the gallery below for some examples and comparison shots; the image above is also a Wowhead render (not a screenshot). This has got to be the most accurate preview I've seen on any database site.

You'll want to be a bit more cautious when looking up information on the game today. World of Raids reports that an unknown ad banner appearing on Wowhead, Thottbot, and Allakhazam has an embedded keylogger trojan. You don't even need to click on the banner, apparently, simply mousing over it will be enough. Wowhead says that all they know for sure is that it originates from "ad.yieldmanager.com", and will produce a redirect to "xpantivirus.com." They're working at isolating it.

The issue is known, and all parties involved are tracking it down, so it should hopefully be resolved soon. In the meantime, if you're looking for a quick way to protect yourself, I would follow the recommendation of World of Raids, and try out the Firefox web browser and the No Script extension. As long as you keep the scripts blocked, it should prevent the banner in question from forcing itself on you. This should also provide you with some protection if you accidentally click on the wrong link elsewhere, such as on the WoW general forums.

Edit: Apparently, the virus in question is not an actual keylogger, but it still does a number on your system, which is reason enough to try to avoid it.

One of the first things I checked out on the PTR was the new fishing daily quests. Call me a glutton for punishment, but I actually enjoy fishing in WoW and have been increasingly interested in this quest ever since it came to my attention via the official forums. Now that the 2.4 test realm has been up for a few days, I've been able to do three of the new, randomly rotating quests which start from Old Man Barlo just outside of Shattrath City.

The first quest I discovered, and the one that I've seen the most so far, is called "Shrimpin' Ain't Easy". It requires you to fly to Zangarmarsh and fish up a few Bloated Barbed Gill Trout. You can catch these by fishing in any of the lakes in the zone. Once you reel one in, you can open it like any other package in the game to collect a few shrimp and gray items. One fish can hold multiple shrimp and this quest can be completed pretty quickly, assuming that you don't encounter any bugs. Currently, I often encounter a bug where I'm unable to catch any fish (aside from the special fishing pools, which don't yield the quest fish) in Zangarmarsh while on this quest. Abandoning and retaking it has fixed the problem every time so far.

Once again, Wowhead has come forward with a few nice new features. First up, we now have dynamic searching (pictured), possibly spurred on by the new competition: just start typing and your search results appear right below the search box, summoned by the power of JavaScript. This even works in the newly updated Firefox search plugin. It doesn't get much more convenient than that, although I am partial to my keyword searches.

Secondly, we have scads of new filters, one of which fills a request from the last post to see all items purchasable with Badges of Justice. We can also filter for quest rewards from a given zone. Furthermore, filters are now usable on more pages: quest subset pages, zone page quest tabs, and token pages. There is a useful filter for items that are new in patch 2.4. It is also possible now to see what items share a cooldown with a given item (example). Finally, quest difficulty levels have been added to quest pages, showing at what levels the quests are red, orange, yellow, green and grey, and forming a nice pretty rainbow. Now where are my ponies?

There are quite a few WoW database sites out there. Thottbot was the first big one that I was aware of; other big sites include Allakhazam, the Goblin Workshop, and of course Wowhead. Then there are some lesser-known contenders (at least to me; it took me a bit to come up with them), like WoWd.org, WarCry (I use their news constantly, but never saw the database), GameAmp, WoW Guru, WoWDigger, and TenTonHammer (again, I know TTH for news, but didn't know they had a DB).

And now Curse, long one of the big names in Add-On and news sites, is throwing their hat into the ring with the very capitalized WOWDB, which appears to be in beta right now. It seems like a pretty complete database; it's got all the items, quests, NPCs, and so on that you would expect from a serious act like Curse. But hold on a minute, doesn't it looks a bit similar to a certain other WoW database site of which Curse doesn't seem to be too fond? (Update: Curse has contacted us to say that the linked article wasn't written by anyone on their staff-- instead, it was posted by a user of their site, and that they have no ill will towards Affinity Media or Wowhead). Ignore the Wrath of the Lich King-esque blues for a second, and...oh. Oh dear. Well, at least it's a good design they're copying from, I suppose. See the gallery below for more comparison screenshots. What do you guys think -- is this within the bounds of inspiration and homage, or a blatant rip-off?

Update: Someone named Kody, who claims to be a representative of Curse, has appeared in our comments, and claims that Curse has obtained an "exclusive content contract" with WoWWiki for the use of their information. An interesting claim, especially since most of the content on WoWWiki (written by users) should be covered under Wikia's terms of use and the GNU Free Documentation License, and thus available for use to anyone who credits and sources it. We've sent requests to both Kody and WoWWiki for more information.

Another update after the jump.

The best WoW database site (in my opinion) just got better. Several features have been added to Wowhead over the past couple days; as the site's "Adorable Bearcat Overlord" Miyari notes, they are perhaps not strictly essential (her term is "icing"), but nice to have anyway.

My favorite addition is that users' comments will now be annotated with the patch number that was in effect when the comment was made, so you can more easily spot information that might be outdated (see screenshot).

Alchemical recipes that are attained via discovery are now noted as such under the "source" tab, and the corresponded spells will state their provenance as well. Elixirs will now be annotated as to whether they are Battle or Guardian elixirs. Pet skills will now show which pets can learn the skill, as well as which mobs can teach the skill. And finally, tradeskill spells will show at what skill levels they change from orange to yellow, green, and gray.

I say well done, Wowhead folks! If you have any ideas for how Wowhead can improve, hit up the their Site Feeback forum.