Heirlooms are something I've not really had much experience with but as I've been doing Wintergrasp a lot since hitting 80 (prior to my burnout, that is). However as the prospect of re-rolling a very different kind of class becoming more promising, so did heirlooms.

I remember hearing about them at last year's WWI and it sounded like a great idea at the time. A way to may have your main help out an alt. I would be able to outfit my lowbie toon with decent gear that gets better as she levels. Plus I like the fact they are an homage to classic WoW by taking their names and graphics from weapons no one ever uses anymore.

Oddly I don't know anyone in my guild who uses them but I'm pretty sure someone out there is buying them. I see lots of people regularly clustering around the sellers in Wintergrasp Fortress, diligently checking which item they want for which alt but it seems like the only reason to buy them is if you're an altoholic.

With this in mind, I'm curious, constant readers, did you buy heirlooms in order to make leveling an alt easier? Are they worth the expense? Did they make it easier to level and did you reuse them with multiple alts? What if you've never used them before, do they seem more appealing now the new items have been revealed on the PTR?

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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We've heard these were coming, and now they're here: heirloom chest pieces. We just grabbed these screenshots hot off the patch 3.2 PTR. These are the level 80 versions, of course, but you can get a feel for what each chest has, statwise. You'll notice that the promised 10% experience gain is there on all the pieces, and that they are slightly bugged right now in that each of them has no armor.

You'll also notice that the names and graphics, which hearken back to old original WoW gear, mostly match up with existing heirloom shoulders, so you'll even be able to get your newbie all color coordinated and whatnot. Of course, a set bonus would have been nice too, but I'm sure we'll all be able to comfort ourselves with that nice big experience gain boost. The chests currently cost 40 Heroism badges and a bit of gold to buy, although that may change before the patch goes live.

For most of vanilla WoW and Burning Crusade, my main was a Druid. I healed, I tanked, I DPS, I raided, I PvPed, I did everything with him. He was a great character, I found the class fun (Yes, even before patch 1.8, thank you very much). But somewhere around mid-Burning Crusade, I just plain burnt out on Druids. I don't know if it was just one too many bad raids, if it was just familiarity breeding contempt, or what, but I switched to a Hunter and never looked back.

When Death Knights were announced, I knew that was my new class, and I also knew that my Druid was probably doomed to be level 70 for good. I'd focus on my Death Knight, then my Hunter, then probably my Shaman for heals, followed by my Warlock. My Druid would just languish in Shattrath unless I was really, incredibly bored.

Yay for new heirlooms! Earlier this afternoon, Blizz bestowed upon us the information that in patch 3.2, there would be some heirlooms available for purchase by those who had gained their Crusader titles. There was some hoping in the comments section for an XP boosting belt and/or chest, and your prayers have been answered.

Yes, Zarhym has revealed that you will be able to get chest piece heirlooms in patch 3.2, and that they will give a 10% XP boost that does stack with the boost from the shoulders. So that means, recruit a friend trickery aside, the well-appointed alt can get 10% from shoulders, 10% from chest, and another 100% from rest (at times), and they all stack.

This brings the list of heirloom-able slots to: main/off/two-handed weapons, shields, ranged weapon, trinkets, shoulders, and chest. And there might be more to come in patch 3.2 that we haven't heard about yet. My alts are excited already.

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Patch 3.2 will bring about a new 5, 10, and 25 man instance to WoW, and usher in a new 40-man battleground called the Isle of Conquest. WoW.com will have you covered every step of the way, from extensive PTR coverage through the official live release. Check out WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.2 for all the latest!

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I have to confess something. I'm a sucker for hearing stories about someone playing their Hunter in offbeat ways. What do I mean? Well, take for example that fabled Hunter Tank Gweryc.

Last week I got a great tip from Darth Solo over at WoW Alone about another offbeat Hunter idea. Seems Darth is a fan of solo play. At first I thought as you that this probably isn't completely original. We Hunters tend to just run with our pets anyways. But something kept nagging me to go check out WoW Alone and see just what Darth was doing.

Turns out he's put a lot of thought into how to get the most out of your World of Warcraft experience without having to worry about the drama associated with PUGs or even some guilds.

Of course I would be the first to admit that this kind of play style isn't for me. But if you want to find ways of enjoying your Hunter, getting loot all the while avoiding the drama associated with PUGs. Go check out his Hunter Solo Guides for gear, glyphs, and suggested specs for the Solo Hunter.

Addon Spotlight takes a look at the little bits of Lua and XML that make our interfaces special. From bar mods to unit frames and beyond, if it goes in your Addons folder, we'll cover it here.

I find it hard to believe we haven't featured this mod before, so I guess it's about time. Postal is your mailbox's best friend.

• Your To: field now has a contact list, and will auto-complete all your alts automatically, as well as people you've mailed recently.
• Last name mailed is automatically filled in; great for sending multiple messages to the same person (or if you are constantly mailing stuff to your AH alt, like me).
• Shift-click to take items/money from mail, control-click to return mail, alt-click to add something from your inventory to the current mail.
• "Open all" button (you can also choose to just open all AH mail, etc.)
• Checkboxes to selectively open/return multiple messages at once.
• Shows a summary of money gained after "open all" is done.
• Automatically fill in subject fields when sending money or items, if you leave the subject blank.

Some of these, especially "open all," are so essential they should really be default features. This is all configurable, as well, so if you don't like any of Postal's features, you can easily turn them off.

The mailbox becomes a much more pleasant experience once you have Postal installed. It's a convenience on other characters, but on my bank/AH alt, it's pretty much a necessity. Individually clicking to open, then clicking to take the money/items from each of thirty AH mails gets tedious fast. One click instead of sixty? I'll take it.

Download Postal at Curse

Most of us probably have alts at this point. On my main server, I have a character of each class (and besides the shaman and the mage, they're all at least level 40). And all of them that have leveled past Feralas have a Sprite Darter Hatchling to love and call their own. I like keeping at least something constant across all the different classes.

I've met people who use consistent naming schemes, which is helpful because it makes it easier to tell which alts go with which mains. I've met people that get the same color shirt on all their alts, although it's hard to see under all that armor. Some people like to take the same leveling path every time (like me), some people like to shake it up.

I even know someone who's leveled the same class to 80 several times - Warrior no less. But Rossi is widely considered to be crazy.

If you have alts, is there anything you always do the same way across all of them?

Insider Trader is your inside line on making, selling, buying and using player-made products.

The World of Warcraft's second expansion pack, Wrath of the Lich King, changed the way that we players, as tradespeople, view professions and altered the reasoning behind our choices to pursue them.

The driving factor behind this change was Blizzard's commitment to make each profession seem beneficial and dare I say, fun, to any player, regardless of class. While we did see some changes in this direction in The Burning Crusade, such as an Enchanter's singular ability to enchant his/her own rings, this new vision for trades really hit its stride in Wrath.

To accomplish this, Blizzard shifted focus away from bind on pick-up gear and added self-buffs and self-enchants, as well as some other incentives, to give players more choice.

It used to be, for example, that PvP characters would take Engineering. Leather and 40+ mail-wearers would take Skinning to feed their Leatherworking. Tailors would take Enchanting because it allowed them to recoup some of the costs of crafting gear, and so on.

In essence, we could choose between fun, PvP, gold-making, and the best gear. Now, we can purchase gear from the gear-crafters, and be free to pursue something else, should we wish.

Today, Insider Trader is going to break down the incentives offered by each profession to help you choose what is right for you. Rather than focusing on fun items, I will be addressing stat bonuses.

The purpose of this guide is not to tell you what you need to take in order to be the best raider, or make the most money, or have an edge in PvP, but rather to gather the information to one place and present it for your consideration.

Don't forget to read through the comments section at the end of this article, as there are sure to be tips and stories from our readers!

Tipster Brian pointed us at the under development page, which is now listing details for Patch 3.2. It's looking pretty interesting, all told. More Argent Tournament!

We're going to present a screenshot of the changes from the Under Development page after the jump, but just to make sure your appetites are whetted, so to speak (or type, I'm not actually talking) here's a detail: there will be a new battleground called the Isle of Conquest, a large scale siege between the Horde and the Alliance.

But wait, there's more!

Two major questions remain from our Outland Leveling advice column from last week: Is it worth it to run Dungeons, and is it worth it to level a Profession? In both cases, the answer is: It depends.

I know that sounds like a bit of a copout, but it is true. You can pretty much level straight to 70 and even 80 without ever touching a dungeon or learning a profession and do just fine. That said, there are certainly advantages to delving into dungeons or putting your Gnomish Army Knife to actual use. Let's take a look.

With 3.1 sort of leveling out for now, It's probably a good time to switch our views to leveling. It's a good a time as any to welcome any new Death Knights into the fold and give them a few tips for getting through that silly old Outland content and into Northrend.

Kebina Trudough here, offering you the best gold making secrets they don't want you to know about! I was like you once, poor and homely, before I discovered my patented system. Now you too can fill your pockets with the good stuff without ever breaking a sweat! Why spend all your time toiling when you could be vacationing in the Hot Springs? I'm not offering these tips for 100 gold, or 90 gold, or even 50 gold! No, not even 20 gold! My system is yours for FREE! Satisfaction guaranteed or I'll give you a full refund (handling charges may apply).

A character's bank is a special place meant to store gear, consumables, novelty items and a whole mess of other things (and I do mean mess!). Because of this, many players have at least one "bank alt" which is an additional character created primarily to house and auction items.

The value of your banker's ability to store things should not be underestimated. Today, I will walk you through the steps to and costs of purchasing bank space, and show you an example of how it can be utilized to help you make gold.

Banking Costs: Guild vs. Personal
Every bank alt should purchase the first four bag slots within their own personal banks. This will cost you a total of 36g10s, and require that you purchase actual bags to place in those slots. The more slots the bags can hold, the more storage you will have.

We linked to 3D Armory a little while ago, and as Eliah says, it does what it says it'll do: provides a picture of your character as they are in the Armory in 3D. The site's founder recently emailed us about a few improvements, and as you can see over there, there's lots of new additions. All the different regions are now reachable, and while there was an issue with special characters in the realm name, it's been fixed, so you can get any character that's online into the 3D viewer. They've added character customization, so you can make sure that the model in the picture matches your model in game. Screenshots can now be taken, and even uploaded to Facebook through their Facebook app.

And there are some inter-character features as well: you can now comment on character profiles, which might be a good or a bad thing -- you could mark a good player or maybe label a ninja (though we're not sure what kind of moderation there is for that. And finally they've created something called the PuGchecker, which lets you quickly and easily enter character names and see what raid achievements those characters have earned (so if someone says they've been to OS before, you can make sure it's true). And they've even got an ingame macro you can use to run the script from directly in the game.

The rate of development over there is pretty impressive, and the site has definitely grown into much more than just your average Armory substitute. At some point you wonder just how many of the features are necessary (if you ever want to see your character in 3D, you can pretty much just log into the game), but they're definitely getting creative.

Well, I finally decided to level my orc shaman, as only having my alliance shaman experience the fun of raiding and see all that mail that dropped like rain when I was on my warrior vanish like smoke. Nothing but plate the second I can't wear plate. Plus, my orc has bear heads on his shoulders, and there's nothing wrong with that.

Since it's my second shaman to 80 I decided to play with leveling strategies. I started the day as enhancement (working on my telekinesis as you can see) and then moved on to elemental after digging my old ZA gear out of the bank. My experience as elemental indicates that I need to suck a lot less at elemental. Somehow on every pull, I would end up with six or seven mobs crawling all over me giving me awful slobbering undead kisses. Or biting me. One of the two, I always get them confused. I'd like to thank Thunderstorm for its support.

My first tip to shamans newly leveling through Northrend is this: do both starting zones. Now that the big push of people getting to 80 has subsided, neither zone is especially packed with people. We've talked before about the loot available in those zones, which if you're like me and trying to test out multiple specs as you level or even just want to have a backup spellpower set in case you absolutely cannot find a healer for that Nexus run is very helpful.

If you do both zones, you will easily be level 73 to 74 by the time you're done. There's a lot of quests there. This means that you can skip Grizzly Hills and go to Dragonblight if you'd prefer (it's what I did on my Draenei, actually going back to Grizzly Hills afterwards) but on my orc I'm planning to go Borean - Howling Fjord - Grizzly Hills - Dragonblight because I'm a sucker for the group quests in Grizzly.