Filed under: Fan stuff

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the quarter-finals of the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

When the magical energies had died down, it was indeed Loken who remained standing in last week's Thunderdome matchup against Xevozz. The Dark Titan fought for every vote, claiming his victory with 52% spectator approval. We'll review how things went down after the break, plus you'll get a chance to vote in the last quarter-finals match of the season: Ymiron versus Krik'thir.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.

It came from the Blog is holding its second Battleground Bonanza today:

• When: Saturday, January 16th, 4:30pm EST (1:30pm PST, 2:30pm Server time)
• Where: The Hall of the Brave (where the Battlemasters are), Orgrimmar, Zangarmarsh U.S.
• Who: Any level 10 or above Horde character.
• How: Ask any It came from the Blog Lurker or Robinator for a guild invite.
• What: Battleground premades

We will be forming groups and hitting as many level/group-size appropriate BGs as we can for an hour or so. If you can't make it to the Hall of the Brave in time for the event, you will miss out on the first screenshot, but will still be able to participate. We will also be doing some BG related quests, so there will be some traveling for certain level ranges.

If you are unfamiliar with Battleground play, please do some homework so that it will be more fun for both you and your teammates. Also, if you have any questions about the WoW.com guild, please read our FAQ.

Come join the fun!

We here at WoW.com are on a Daily Quest to bring you interesting, informative and entertaining WoW-related links from around the blogosphere.

• Youtube superstar MrVoletron has released another remix, which you can see embedded above or over on his channel. Be warned, the beginning of this one is a little ear-shattering. Turn your volume down.
• Here's yet another review of the World of Warcraft magazine, this time from Azure Shadows.
• Empowered Fire compares Icecrown Citadel trinkets for mages.
• Shades of Grey connects a few lore dots and speculates on what the Cataclysm may bring. Is it just the beginning?
• With the introduction of the dungeon finder, could that design be used to improve queueing for battlegrounds? Cynwise thinks so.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the quarter-finals of the Original Five-Man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

In a barrage of wings, Ley-Guardian Eregos confronted Skadi the Ruthless in the skies over the Thunderdome last week. Let's just say it was no party for Mr. Skadi. Eregos took the match with a stinging 75.3% of the spectator vote, sending the hapless Frost Vrykul plummeting from the match. We'll get a view of the beat-down after the break, plus we'll set up this week's battle between Loken and Xevozz.

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls ... Dyin' time's here.

The Classifieds brings you weekly updates on guild recruiting, rankings, splits and merges, progression and more. Have guild news or a Random Act of Uberness to share? E-mail The Classifieds.

Welcome to our first installment of The Classifieds, an evolution of our former Guildwatch feature. As more and more players move into endgame raiding, we thought it fitting that our guild news should evolve, too. The Classifieds gives you more of the news you can use: who's progressing, who's marking milestones, who's recruiting. But it's not only about guilds. Because we're all down there in the trenches of Dungeon Finder groups at every opportunity, The Classifieds lets you send a shout-out to that player who made your last PUG a thing of real beauty (whether through pure technical finesse or a winning attitude). And if you're curious about how WoW intersects with the world at large, we'll be passing along links to academic research studies seeking participants, as well.

Editor's Note: One thing you might notice missing in Guildwatch's new incarnation is the "Drama" section. In the interest of fostering community growth and positive interaction, we're checking the drama and negativity at the door.

Let's open the Classifieds!

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

New from the Department of Old News (wait ... wut?): We're still nuts about papercrafting. While we've spotlighted papercraft before on the site, we haven't featured it specifically on World of WarCrafts. Never let it be said that World of WarCrafts left a creative stone unturned!

Papercrafting is not the same thing as origami, which is the Japanese art of folding paper into intricate representations, preferably without cutting or glue. Papercrafting, in contrast, is the process of creating scale models from heavy, pre-printed paper or stock. Craftsy types download patterns rated by difficulty from sites such as World of Warcrafts Unofficial Papercrafts. Site manager Pascal was profiled last year by the Blizzard's official European WoW community site. We talked to Pascal recently for a fresh spin on WoW papercrafting.

Some of the coolest contests happen in the EU, and unfortunately, sometimes completely under our radar. World of Warcraft in Europe recently announced the winners of a contest held between November 23 and December 6, 2009 (that's a period of two weeks, so even the folks in Europe might've missed out on it) which asked folks to design their own World of Warcraft trading card. We told you the coolest contests happen in the EU.

Winners were announced last December 18, 2009, with Blizzard apparently selecting the best entries according to language. Five winners were selected, with J. Hoermandinger winning the top prize for English submissions with the Boo'Yah "Brickhead" card; D. Klenk was the German winner with Shilanya; S. Mariez won the French top prize with Perséphia Tristombe; A. Fuentes Garcia was the Spanish winner with Nairies; and A. Kirsanova won the Russian prize with a thankfully nameless but awesome-looking card (Cyrillic would be a little troublesome to jot down here).

The contest awarded a veritable Upper Deck treasure trove that included a Death Knight deluxe starter kit, a World of Warcraft miniatures game starter kit and booster pack, and the ScourgeWar epic collection which has the Tiny loot card. The loot card enables Horde characters to mount a miniature raptor and Alliance characters to ride a miniature pony to move at unmounted speed. Congratulations to the all the winners! For those of you who missed out on the fun, you can always make your own TCG cards by downloading their Horde or Alliance templates. Enjoy!

It's a new year and that means another opportunity to play oracle and figure out what Blizzard's plans are for 2010. BlizzPlanet has gone ahead and tossed out some of their ideas on what will happen for BlizzCon this year, laying out their predictions and even speculating on the event date. As you might know, there was a bit of confusion stemming from supposed leaked information that pointed to BlizzCon 2010 happening in Las Vegas in July. That didn't go down so well with Blizzard, and the Las Vegas convention center later retracted its statements.

BlizzPlanet points out, quite logically, that Blizzard probably wasn't too thrilled with that. Even if they had planned to do it in Las Vegas, that kind of public relations misstep is a deal breaker. Besides, Eldorian from BlizzPlanet applies simple, sound logic to his sleuthing work and explains that examining the Anaheim Convention Center's Calendar of Events reveals an odd, blank date on the weekend of August 20-21, yet almost all the weekends of the venue are already booked. With Blizzard being the secretive bunch that they are, he figures those blank dates actually correspond with this year's BlizzCon event. It's a pretty cool theory. Read the rest of their predictions as well as a few of our own guesses after the jump.

When the World of Warcraft Anniversary mini-site was unveiled last November, one of its features was a photo-mosaic dubbed the Battlecry which would unlock little art goodies each time a certain milestone was reached. The Battlecry mosaic called for player submissions to submit their pictures with a logo of their favored faction, with a modest goal of 20,000 player-submitted pictures in order to reveal the final artwork created specially for the event.

It's come along rather smoothly, and some really cool player pictures have been submitted, with the seeming abundance of Horde-aligned pictures prompting us to ask where the Alliance pride was. But what really surprises me is how long the whole project is taking. When the site was launched, one of the first questions that actually ran through my head was how long it would take to fill up the whole mosaic. With over ten million active players, you'd think getting to 20,000 would be easy. Out of ten million, that's like a drop in a bucket. But after almost two months of the site being active, we're still only at 32% of the goal. Why?

The first of Tokyopop's class-themed manga hit the shelves early in December. World of Warcraft: Death Knight written by Dan Jolley and illustrated by Rocio Zucchi, the manga is a self-contained 166-page story detailing the life of a notable Death Knight, Thassarian, the first of the Lich King's rune-wielding champions to join the Alliance. I'm a huge fan of Tokyopop's comics made for the Warcraft universe and think that the Warcraft Legends series contain some of the best stories told about the Blizzard franchise.

The Death Knight manga kicks off a new direction in Tokyopop's Warcraft manga series, taking a break from short story compilations and focusing on a lore character representative of a specific class. The story of Thassarian, as previewed in October last year, explores the World of Warcraft in-depth through a biographical story that follows the hero's origins as a soldier of Lordaeron who falls and is raised as one of Arthas' minions. To make things simple, I'll give my thoughts on the book right before the break and explain it afterward -- it's a wonderful, well-written and beautifully illustrated comic that I highly recommend to any fan of Warcraft comics. It's good. Now that we've got that out of the way, let's dive into the meat of the manga after the break.

World of WarCrafts spotlights art and creativity by WoW players, including fan art, cooking, comics, cosplay, music and fan fiction. Show us how you express yourself; contact our tips line (attention: World of WarCrafts) with your not-for-profit, WoW-inspired creations.

Admit it: You thought murlocs were spineless little critters, didn't you? Take a peek inside our gallery, below, and you'll see that even this sweet little fellow boasts his share of backbone -- literally. World of WarCrafts visited with Bradley Barger (aka Monmanteau of US Stormreaver), one of the winners of this year's WoW Holiday Dessert Contest, for a taste of the inspiration behind his winning creation. What we discovered beneath this little guy's skin (a backbone of steel!) was more spine than we ever expected from a murloc.

The creation is based around a metal armature, which Bradley covered with cereal-based cake and butter cream, then finished with fondant for a smooth texture. The spines are made from colored sugar, melted and cut to shape. The pond water is fashioned from a high-temperature molten sugar mixture, poured it into a frame of fondant.



Continue past the break for an interview with Bradley on how he cooked up this sweet success.

Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week.

Think you've got what it takes to make it through another year in the company of the denizens of [1.Local]? Work your way through the comments on these recent favorite posts at WoW.com -- not only the comments listed here from the "Best of" roundups, but the comments on the original posts, too -- and we'll talk.

Cataclysm, Cataclysm, Cataclysm July 2009 was one long paroxysm about Cataclysm. dextros: I was sad to see the Worgen pets vanish; for a time, every hunter in our raid group had one. =D Sargenus: Ahh. The masks! I remember getting into a fight with a friend who apparently -knew- Goblins and Worgen would NEVER be a playable race and told me to stop dreaming. I guess you can tell, I mock him every day after BlizzCon. :D

Behold the miracle of confection. Made by Christina Drylie of Apple Valley, California it's one of the 10 winning entries in this year's Blizzard Holiday Desert contest. Warning: may erupt from Deepholm and unleash elemental devastation. In addition to the Aspect of Earth, we have Moonkin, Murlocs, Lord Marrowgar and Icecrown Citadel in edible form. Hasten yourselves to go forth and consume their images. Unfortunately you won't be able to actually eat any of the deserts, but it's the web, we haven't worked out how to make hypertext work for creating cake.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the semi-finals of the five-man Wrath of the Lich King season. Scroll to the end of the last round's post for a listing of semi-final matches. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

Welcome to the semi-finals of the Wrath of the Lich King Original Five-Mans season of Two Bosses Enter, One Boss Leaves! This week's matchup is big -- really, really big. In fact, we're thinking about expanding the Two Bosses Thunderdome so that our opponents can physically fit inside (and because these adds are not something we want running loose in the stands).

Top-seeded Anub'Arak of Azjol-Nerub squares off against the ever-popular King Dred in this week's Thunderdome match. There are sure to be plenty of hasty conclusions: "It's Anub, man -- he rocks ToC!" (wrong fight there, dude) and the inevitable "OMNOMNOM" of the dino fanboys. Rescuing us from the tedium are our loyal fans, who've built an entire season of convincing scenarios that make weighing your vote a real pleasure. Be sure to read (and contribute to) the comments before you cast your vote -- you just might change your mind after seeing what your fellow spectators have offered up for consideration.

Two Bosses Enter ... but only One Boss Leaves, in WoW.com's series of fantasy death matches. Welcome to the end of the current round of the five-man Wrath of the Lich King season. Grab a seat, and let's get ready to rumble!

It wasn't much of a contest this week, as Skadi the Ruthless swept to a whirlwind victory over Svala Sorrowgrave. Sixty-three percent of the spectators roared their approval of the spear-wielding, undead Frost Vrykul, undoubtedly moving him into a solid position for the upcoming semi-finals. But however one-sided its ultimate conclusion, this matchup offered the opportunity for a number of interesting scenarios.

Dominika: Let's review the facts. Skadi doesn't do his own fighting. Skadi throws Vargul at his opponents, slows them down with his Proto-Drake ... It's only when you really piss him off that he jumps down to take you on one on one. Now, what are these Vargul he throws at you? Vargul, of course, are the Vrykul judged as unworthy by the Val'kyr.

There's but one reason a Val'kyr would fight a Vrykul: to prove his worth. And he's not going to do that by hiding behind the unworthy. Skadi's hands are tied. He has to take her on one on one. His main advantage then, is his Poisoned Spear. His Whirlwind hurts, but it's difficult to hit someone who can fly. When he finds himself trapped on the altar to be sacrificed, his Vargul brothers know that they can't hold back any longer. They bum rush the stage to free him. The enraged Skadi tells everyone to take Svala (that's what she said), but if there's one thing that hordes of undead do poorly against, it's fire. The flames from the brazier make short work of them all, leaving just the Vrykul and the Val'kyr once more.

And when the next ritual comes, Skadi will only have enough time to think of the words he heard echoing down from the keep below long ago ... "Your pathetic failure will serve as a warning to all."