This is certainly an issue (if not a full-blown problem) in my guild, so I wouldn't be surprised if most guilds have a rough time getting guild members to use some of the outside resources they've put together. Nowadays, there are so many ways to make a guild website and so many different things you can do with one that most every guild has at least one place online to call its own. And those places are usually frequented by one or two people in the guild (usually the person running the site and/or maybe the GM and an officer or two), but in my experience, it's kind of tough to get people to use those resources, just because of lack of interest or know-how or habit. What's the point of having a database of members, a message board, and a blog and picture gallery when no one uses it?

Enter Ankie of WoW Ladies, with an intriguing idea to support the guild's website.

In-case you missed it, which really is only possible if you were living under a rock or had something else going on, yesterday's news was some of the largest out of WoW this year. Blizzard is now allowing you to purchase in-game pets for real life money through the Blizzard store. There are two pets, pictured about, available for sale now. The Pandaren Monk and Lil K'T'. Both pets cost $10, and the Pandaren Monk will see 50% of its sale price go towards the Make-a-Wish foundation (for the remainder of the year).

This firmly brings WoW into the arena of microtransactions -- purchasing in-game items for real life money. Some games, not WoW, allow you purchase items which make you stronger in the game. Other games, like WoW, allow the purchase of vanity items, such as these pets, which do nothing other than look cool or count towards vanity achievements. Some people really don't like this model of gaming, others are indifferent, and others are in love with it.

I'm personally in love with it. I think the items are cheap enough to be affordable to a large portion of the player base, and are cool enough to warrant the purchase. Further, since the items don't provide in-game power ups for people, they are essentially meaningless toys. This makes it an ideal luxury item for the virtual-nerd to spend $10 on. So will I buy the new in-game pets? Absolutely, I already have.

But what will you do? Are you going to go out and buy them? Vote in the poll and leave a comment, we want to know.

It's no secret that certain things (and even whole zones, in their current state) are going to go the way of the dodo when Cataclysm arrives, and both players and developers have talked a lot about the changes in Azeroth and environs beyond. By contrast, today I'm interested in hearing about what you don't want to see eighty-sixed -- the quests you'd miss, the factions or NPC's you hope will cling to life, the dungeons or raids you don't want to see go gentle into that good night.

Personally, as dumb as I know this will probably sound, when I think about old Azeroth my mind immediately returns to a tiny quest called Until Death Do Us Part. It's started by a bitter Forsaken who wants you take a pendant to her husband's grave at the Sepulcher. If you only wanted to look at it in terms of game mechanics, then it's a Fed-Ex quest designed to get you across the ocean and questing in Silverpine, but even with all the improvements to questing today, it stands apart. It's a very long journey for a young character, and when you finally arrive at the Sepulcher and find the husband's grave, you realize you've come all this way to deliver a worthless trinket to someone who threw his life away on a hopeless cause. You turn it in and...that's it. There is no follow-up. There is no happy ending. There is, however, the feeling that there's more to the savagery of the Forsaken than meets the eye.

Blizzard is actually trying to move away from quests that emphasize text over cool visuals, and it makes me a little sad just because Until Death Do Us Part was, from a writing standpoint, a masterpiece of effective writing and quick exposition. I'm hoping that, out of all the quests that stand to get axed in Cataclysm, this little gem survives.

Allison's great post about all of the Feats of Strength still available in the game got me thinking: just what kind of value do players place on these "kinda" achievements? Personally, I never gave them much weight -- I have a few of them (I picked up the Vampiric Batling a while ago, and I've got the Competitor's Tabard, among a few other old-school and commemorative achievements), but the ones I've got I didn't really do anything to earn, and the Feats still available don't really mean that much to me. Unlike "real" achievements, Feats don't even give you meaningless points, and they can't be used to get you into any raids or runs that you couldn't do otherwise. They're boring to me.

I'm not that way about all achievements -- there have been a few that I've worked to get done, and there are even non-achievement items that I've pushed for in the past (I worked like crazy to finally get my Netherwing drake, and the only achievement I got for that was the Netherwing reputation). But Feats of Strength in particular seem passive to me, by Blizzard's design: if they happen, great, but there's not enough reward there for me to go out of my way to get them. What do you think?

Whoosh. Well, that went by rather quickly, didn't it? Day of the Dead ends today. Two days is most certainly a short time for a World of Warcraft holiday, but fortunately, there was little to do. Just a visit to Catrina, buying a bread recipe, sharing it with some dead folks, and that's it. It didn't exactly go off without a hitch, either, as there were some known issues with the event. But everything was fixed, eventually, and the short event is now about to finish.

How did everyone find the short holiday? It mirrored the short holiday it was based on in the real world, and even similar holidays all over the world. In the Philippines, we got a non-working holiday for November 2, where most folks are off to the provinces visiting their dead. How did everyone's Day of the Dead go? Were you able to take a gander at the lovely dancing Catrina? Were you able to bake some (presumably stale) bread? What's your take on these short holidays? Personally, I think it's a nice touch. These blink-and-you'll-miss-it events similar to Pirate's Day are nice nods to our real world happenings. Hopefully, all of you got a chance to enjoy this new but brief world event.

This is it, the end of Hallow's End. Let's make today's Breakfast Topic a quick one... how did your Hallow's End go? Were you able to obtain everything you needed? It took me logging on every hour on the hour (alright, on the hour when I remembered it, anyway) to get the Hallowed Helm which I didn't manage to pick up last year. Along the way, I lined my bags with an assortment of wands, loads of ridiculous masks that still didn't complete A Mask for All Occasions, and enough Tooth Picks to make a family of sharks sparkly clean. I finally got it with forty-something hours to spare, after five straight tricks from Innkeeper Gryshka.

How did you fare? Did you manage to get The Hallowed title on all your characters? Were you able to beat the Headless Horseman into coughing up more candy? Did you go around making those emotes just to get treats for those kids? Time's run out on this World of Warcraft holiday, so share your in-game stories about this past week or so.

The new LFG system is certainly great, but there's one problem with random PuGs that I'm sure it won't fix, and that is of course the problem of ninjas. As long as random people are getting into groups (and with the new rewards system in place, there'll be plenty of that), some of them will always find the loot more tempting than keeping their reputation clean. So what's the solution?

Obviously, over on Guildwatch, we've been covering people shouting out names and guilds on the forums for a while, but as we've also reported a few times over there, that barely helps -- even if people do remember a ninja on their server, one name change later and they're gone. A few guildleaders over on Jubei'thos have tried putting a site together to track known ninjas on the server, but even that has issues; it's tough to avoid false positives, even if you do require screenshots.

But surely there must be a solution, so let's put our heads together: a debuff? Something like the group vote-kicking system that's coming in patch 3.3? If Blizzard wanted to really go for fair, they could just take the Need-before-Greed system and turn it into straight Need: if an item matches your class and spec, you get a roll (with items everyone can use giving everyone a roll), and the best roll always wins. You can turn it off (for a Master Looter-style raid), but for PuGs, why even bother with a Need/Greed difference? What do you think?

One of the things that's continually surprised me since news broke on the likely changes to the Horde's leadership is how many otherwise die-hard Horde players have considered going Alliance. Yeah, yeah, most of it's probably idle threats anyway, but the real issue is one that's simmered for the length of Wrath's storyline. Lots of traditional Horde players are happy to fight under Thrall. Lots of traditional Horde players are...not so happy to fight under someone else.

The issue seems to be the growing rift between players and Horde leadership in Northrend, and the degree to which many of us can't identify with the sub-faction that eventually hijacks the Horde storyline. I burned Saurfang's letter as he asked. I nodded alongside Golluk Rockfist as he told Horde players, "You are leaving to the Ruby Dragonshrine. This is not a request." I sat with Thrall in his darkest moments in the Undercity throne room, when he realized that everything was lost.

By contrast, I /facepalmed my way through Icecrown.

Spoiler material past the break.

The LFG system has been completely revamped. Details were released the other day. It's supposed to be coming some time in patch 3.3. You won't have to worry about not finding a tank or a healer as the LFG interface is supposed to draw from a pool of various servers. The idea of pulling players from other servers seems like a double edged sword. Sure you might be able to run into more people and more opportunities, but what happens if you run across a ninja or an unsavory player? I suppose it's reassuring to know that they're on a different server than you are.

But here's some other changes:

• Players can join as individuals, as a full group, or a partial group to look for additional party members.
• Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.

Personally I like the idea of not having to fly all the way down to the Utgarde or Nexus instances. That's going to cut down on travel time for sure. Hopefully the players we'll be partying with will already be fully repaired and have enough reagents to last the run. It's nice to know that extra convenience has been added for the days where we forget. Are you looking forward to these new changes?

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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Just about every wall has been broken down now. The only thing left is the ability to change one's class, which probably won't happen anytime... soon®. Yesterday, the highly anticipated Race Change service went live, and I'm sure a lot of players rushed to get their makeover. Take Gregg, for example, who went on and changed his Level 70 Tauren Hunter into a weed-loving Troll. I mean, he's wanted to do that for a while. I know I've been hankering for race change myself, but now that the service is here, I haven't exactly jumped the gun. Why? I said I wanted to turn my Blood Elf Death Knight -- I'm quite happy with just one Sin'dorei -- into an Orc, but now I'm kind of wondering.

I still want to change my character's race, I'm just not quite settled on which one to switch to. Race change is kind of like a retcon in the World of Warcraft, more so than name changes or customization of appearance. It's right up there with gender changes. Faction changes are different because it kind of take away your character's entire continuity, and I'm sure a lot of RP'ers made completely different back-stories for faction-changed characters. Race change allows you to have essentially the same character but with a major difference.

We asked what race you'd switch to about a month back, but now that the service is here, we're going to ask who's up and done the change? What race did you switch from and what race did you switch to? Tell us why! Personally, I'm just kind of bored with another Blood Elf, and I want one of each race (I know, I should've thought of that to begin with). Lame, right? On the other hand, I'm holding out for that Undead Hunter I've always wanted. Now that World of Warcraft's personal retcon is a paid service, have you taken advantage of it? Have you changed anything else besides your race such as gender or name?

Interesting weekend for me: My schedule is such that I can't really do weekend raids with my Alliance guild, but with fall coming the crummy weather seems to have led to a renaissance for my Horde side play, and suddenly I found myself running Onyxia and TotC 10 on Malfurion in my finest Tauren warrior self. (Tauren warriors: great race/class combo or the greatest race/class combo? The world may never know.) Since I'm fairly familiar with the fights in both cases, it seemed natural enough to explain them for people who hadn't done them.

And then I realized that, without really even paying attention, I'd sort of taken the job over entirely. It just seemed like what I should do: even when I forgot to mention an element of a fight like Gormok's spell lock, I just found myself calmly explaining things in a voice that, frankly, I didn't really even recognize. It was as if I was comfortable telling people what to do. Almost without realizing it I'd started telling people what to do in a raid, and they were doing it. The whole thing was somewhat surreal all told.

So how about you? Ever found yourself leading a raid, an instance, or just a charge across AV without really expecting it? Or are you always in charge in WoW? Are you a leader, a follower, or a bit of both?

It's not unusual to see player speculation on what we'll see when Cataclysm arrives, and most of us have our own private wish lists. I'm sure I could come up with my own if I thought about it, but while riding between Kamagua and Moa'ki Harbor last night on the Kalu'ak ferry lazily chatting with people, it occurred to me that one of the things I'd kill to have again is another faction like the Tuskarr.

These guys are, for lack of a better word, awesome. Their emotes are fantastic. They sell an evil penguin pet and a cool fishing item (the Mastercraft Kalu'ak Fishing Pole) that probably won't be replaced for the duration of the expansion. Their ships are giant turtles traveling along beautiful coastline with a vendor on board (seriously, riding these at night = an endless series of Kodak moments). They get my vote as the faction that immerses you most thoroughly in what they need and what they're doing to survive in an increasingly hostile Azeroth, and I'm wondering if, given Northrend's various difficulties, they might be convinced to seek warmer climes just so we don't have to give them up.

Agonizing rep grinds have plagued the game since classic, but the Tuskarr are such a well-realized bunch that even at exalted I love hanging around their villages. What's your favorite faction, and is there anything about them you'd like to see repeated with future reputation grinds?

There's another new build on the PTR, which means we're one step closer to seeing the new patch 3.3 drop. And while of course Icecrown probably holds its place as the biggest feature of the new patch, there's a whole slew of other changes to look ahead to, from updated achievements and a new faction to run, a brand new LFG interface with cross-realm instances, the Kalu'ak fishing derby, speeded-up Northrend reputation grinds, and lots of other things. Man oh man this patch is building up to be quite the event.

So the question today is: what are you most looking forward to? Personally, I remain a fan of the 5-man instances -- I've already run two of them on the PTR, but fighting enemies co-op in a small group like that is really why I play the game. And of course cross-realm LFG will probably be a big part of the excitement for me as well. While I do expect there to be a few issues, hopefully it'll make jumping into a group as quick and easy as possible. And I'm looking forward to that fishing tournament, too -- the last one was a good idea, but hopefully a new implementation will help freshen things up.

What are you looking forward to in patch 3.3?

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Patch 3.3 is the last major patch of Wrath of the Lich King. With the new Icecrown Citadel 5-man dungeons and 10/25-man raid arriving soon, patch 3.3 will deal the final blow to the Arthas. WoW.com's Guide to Patch 3.3 will keep you updated with all the latest patch news.

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For some reason, crafting has always been a big part of massively multiplayer games. Maybe it's their quality as loot-collecting simulators, but from the very early graphical MMOs, players have almost always been able to create and modify and trade and sell items of their own. Though we don't talk about it as a mechanic much (you press a button and get what you crafted, what's the big deal), it's certainly one of the main reasons people play World of Warcraft, and the crafting system has come to not only fuel the economy, but has ended up becoming one of the best ways to show off and present your customized character.

So our question today is: what's your favorite or most important crafting item? I'm in the middle of leveling my paladin, and he's just now reaching the highest reaches of Engineering, which is a skill I've never leveled up before, but have always wanted to. I haven't gotten together the gold for epic flying yet (well on my way at level 73), but I did make normal flying machine as soon as I could. And my big goal with this character, other than getting him raiding ASAP, is to make the Mekgineer's Chopper -- ever since we first saw it in the early days of Wrath, I've planned to get a character up high enough to make it. I know, I know, I can buy it, but for me it's a crafting thing -- I want to go out, find what I need to find, and craft it with my own virtual hands.

Any other crafted items that have you wanting to make something for yourself?