Zach loves the Battlegrounds. He loves them so much that he spends nearly all his playing time mucking around in them. He loves them so much he writes a column devoted to them. He loves it so much he makes a comic based on Battlegrounds play. You could say he eats, lives, and breathes Battlegrounds and world PvP. And maybe some Krispy Kreme doughnuts. It's kind of hard to get by without doughnuts.

Alright, so you have some kind of vague idea about what a Battleground is. Basically, Battlegrounds are where players go to consensually bash each others brains out. Or fry them. Or freeze them. These instances are designed for players to enjoy PvP, get a bit of honor and, if you're not already at max level, some experience. In the future, Blizzard has revealed plans to make the Battlegrounds even more like instances or dungeons by hinting at possible actual loot rewards. It's an interesting concept we'll have to revisit sometime in the future.

For now, we'll get back down to the basics. Last week we discussed how to get inside a Battleground. That's easy enough, especially with the new changes to the Battlegrounds queue system. This week we'll take a closer look at the different Battlegrounds available. Think of it as a nice buffet of PvP that you can choose from. What kind of Battleground you choose will depend on what kind of game you want to play (or more realistically, what Marks of Honor you still need. We'll get to that later). Hit the jump to check out this week's featured Battleground, Warsong Gulch.

Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, the weekly World of Warcraft Hunter class column. This week we continue our "So you want to be a hunter" leveling series as we look at Levels 60-70 and see why I really feel they're the best class in the game. So join me, Eddie Carrington, Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge blog and podcast, as we explore what's in store for us hunters.

Maybe one day hunters being able to tame duids as their very own pet. Wouldn't that be awesome? I want to thank Dwarffinator and Lissana of Restokin.com for making this picture and sending it in for me to use.

This is part six of our, now eight part "So you want to be a hunter" leveling guide series. In what was originally to be our final guide, we will now instead cover 10 levels, 60-70, with levels 71 through 80 coming next week. Part of this change is in response to your feedback wanting a bit more information on the skills.

As we do in each, this week we'll review what skills you learn, suggest talent builds for both you and your pet as you level, we'll highlight some suggested dungeon quests that match your current level.

We've 6 previous installations in this series. Here's what we've talked about so far.

• Part 1: We reviewed racials and their impact on the hunter class. Reviewed each of the current races and what the benefits were of each racial.
• Part 2: We quickly talked about the first nine levels. We also went on to talk about each of the three hunter talent trees and their basic play style.
• Part 3: Last week we discussed what happened from levels 10 through 20. We also went over the quests to learn how to tame your first pet.
• Part 4: We covered some of the covered attacks, buffs and spells. We also began looking at how to teach your pet new skills by applying pet talents.
• Part 5: We covered levels 21 through 40. We ended up with you getting your epic riding mount and you now can wear mail. From now on completing quests and gaining levels will be much faster.
• Part 6: Is where we started to see that we were learning more new ranks than new spells as we leveled from 41 to 60. We ended our time in Outlands with our first flying mount.

That's where we've been. But where are we heading? This week we'll be levels 60 to 70. We'll wrap up Outlands, head out to Northrend. Next week we'll wrap it up by reaching level 80. Then we'll focus on gearing up join everyone having fun storming the castle to tackle the Sindragosa, the Lich King and his Scourge minions and anything else Blizzard can through our way as part of Patch 3.3.

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

• All Things Azeroth is doing a podcast a day during the month of November.
• Myth Busted: Fast Weapon Upgrades at Big Hit Box.
• World of Matticus talks about his guild's recruiting strategy and how he's using the World of Raids recruiting tool.
• Moonglade talks about the Aim for Hybrid DPS.
• Pikestaff of Aspect of the Hare looks at the Long and Winding Road in WoW and the WoW-blogosphere.

Go Phillies!

Each week Dominic Hobbs brings you Blood Pact. "Much like your life as a warlock, it is important to learn from what we find in the world... before twisting it to our will." ~ Summoner Teli'Larien

We're not hunters. We don't wander about shopping for a pet that catches our eye, like some fashion accessory. We reach through into the nether and wrest demons into this world, binding them to our will. We maintain our bond to this demonic denizen of the shadow, summoning them to our side at need. They are not pets, some companion for the terminally lonely and friendless, they are minions. They are our servants and slaves, powerful beings controlled through dominion, not feeble minded animals cooing for snacks.

This week I will start a review of our minions -- what they can do for us and how best we can use them. My aim is for this to be of use to anyone new to the class and these minions as well as more experienced players looking for tips and tricks. After the break we start right off with our pocket-mage.

Welcome to Lichborne, WoW.com's death knight column.

Hi and welcome to this post Day of the Dead Lichborne. I'm filling in for Daniel this week to talk about my personal favorite death knight talent spec, namely blood. Blood! Over the past year blood has seen its ups and downs, often lagging behind frost for tanking and unholy for DPS (and at times vice versa) but as of patch 3.2 blood seems to be in a really good place, overall. Strong for soloing/questing as well as instancing as either a tank or DPS spec, blood can stand shoulder to shoulder with the other DK talent specs.

Blood's reputation was formed in the early days of Wrath of the Lich King as one of the absolute best leveling specs due to its very strong self healing options. While these were toned down from their beta and early release heights, the tree is still the strongest at creating opportunities to regenerate health of the three, and is often used by enterprising DK's looking to solo older content. But it's capable of far more than that, and of the three specs it's the most physical damage based tree with Heart Strike being purely weapon based damage. Furthermore, blood DK's have one of the nicest pure physical DPS buff abilities in the game with Hysteria. You can be selfish with it and save it for yourself, as you're almost sure to make back the health you'll lose to the talent, but if you choose to share it with a DPS warrior or cat feral druid, the raw DPS they can put out (especially druids) can be rather crazy.

So let us talk about blood. Blood is life... and in your hands, it can also be death.

All the World's a Stage, and all the orcs and humans merely players. They have their stories and their characters; and one player in his time plays many roles.

All the World's a Stage has been a voice for roleplaying in WoW for over two years now. I didn't quite realize it at the time, but the article entitled "So you want to be a bad guy" was just about at the 2 year mark for this column! To celebrate belatedly, today we'll review some of the other websites about roleplaying in WoW out there. If you like All the World's a Stage, you'll probably enjoy these as well.

In addition, you will find that some of these websites have similar, but unique pages with information about roleplaying the various races and classes of Azeroth. So for those of you who would like to have a reference to all these articles in a single place, I've collected them all together in one list at the end of the article. This list includes my own articles, as well as those of all the other websites I'm about to mention which follow on the same theme.

This week on Totem Talk we're going to continue the leveling with coverage of going from level 41 (so actually a little beyond SM, but "Razorfen Downs to Outland" or "Uldaman to Outland" didn't really have the same zing) to level 68, which is the level at which you can board the boat to Northrend. Some basic things to consider before getting to the meat of things.

• It is this writer's opinion that these are the levels that really define your spec and role. It's in the 40's that you can actually have enough talents and have trained enough skills that the real potential of each spec comes through: your elemental shaman actually feels and plays significantly differently than your dual wielding enhancement shaman, and while both can still heal, resto really starts pulling ahead here.
• Shamans were originally designed as 'offensive hybrids' to balance out the paladin's 'defensive hybrid' nature. Since shamans and paladins are no longer designed in opposition those roles have blurred somewhat, but elements of the original intent still show through. Keep in mind that two of the three shaman trees are DPS oriented, and at these levels the fact that one is a ranged DPS while the other is melee will not seem as distinctive as those roles become in raiding/instancing.
• Gear will start to drop in Outland that is more optimal for individual shaman specs. Before then, mail with spell power and/or MP5 is still somewhat rare on the ground in Azeroth outside of the various instance blues that drop. You're just going to have to work around it, annoying as it is.
• Shamans are pretty bloody flexible. I have a friend (Hi Will) who has leveled an orc shaman to 80 as resto, and is working on an alliance shaman as well. Again as resto. And he kills things just fine. It's slower, yes, but it can work, so if you have a spec you really like don't despair of leveling with it as a shaman.

Okay, now to talk about what you'll be doing for 28 levels.

I know -- most of you will hear the word "chatlinks" and think of horrible times in Trade channel where people are spamming the names of abilities and items in different ways, from nonsense to offensive. But chatlinking is a skill that isn't talked about much, and there definitely are place where it's useful (telling guild members about an item that might help them, or linking an enchant to show what mats it needs). So, encouraged by this thread over on Epic Advice, let's run through a few of the ways you can put links to items in the chat channel.

Zach takes you on a tour of the Battlegrounds and world PvP. Think of it as the casual player's guide to World of Warcraft PvP. This will consist mostly of hopping around from place to place hitting things, spouting all manner of asshattery, and playing heavy metal music. Ok, that's not entirely true. Zach doesn't play heavy metal music when he PvPs. He plays Mika. Because fewer things are more embarrassing than getting pwned by a player who listens to Love Today while PvPing.

This post is for noobs. Now don't get your knickers up in a bunch. It's alright. We were all noobs once. I remember the first time I entered Warsong Gulch and had no idea what to do with the flag after picking it up, eventually dropping it at the flag spawn area it thinking that was the way to capture it. Naturally, the enemy returned it and promptly capped, resulting in a torrent of insults and less savory emotes throughout that game. Ah, the good old days.

Of course, if I'd let the experience intimidate me, I probably wouldn't have entered another Battleground again. But I'm nothing if not stubborn, so I eventually slogged my way through Warsong Gulch (it was the only Battleground back then) and got the hang of things. These days, Battlegrounds are considered to be a "casual" form of PvP, which is easily enjoyed by solo players as well as groups. Since we've gotten more than a few questions regarding how to start playing the Battlegrounds lately -- it turns out that despite having 11 million players pick up the game, a lot of people are only just starting to play World of Warcraft -- so for today we'll take an absolute beginner's look at the Battlegrounds.

Welcome back to the Scattered Shots, the weekly Hunter class column. This week we continue the "So you want to be a hunter" leveling series.So join me, Eddie Carrington, Brigwyn from The Hunting Lodge, as we explore what's in store for us hunters as we go through 20 levels of information, starting at 41 and ending at 60..

This is part six in our seven part leveling guide series. As we do in each, this week we'll review what skills you learn, suggest talent builds for both you and your pet, highlight some quests and instances that might be of interest, as well as show you which rare pets are tamable for your level.

As every week we'll recap what we have covered up to now.

• Part 1: We reviewed racials and their impact on the hunter class. Reviewed each of the current races and what the benefits were of each racial.
• Part 2: We quickly talked about the first nine levels. We also went on to talk about each of the three hunter talent trees and their basic play style.
• Part 3: Last week we discussed what happened from levels 10 through 20. We also went over the quests to learn how to tame your first pet.
• Part 4: We covered some of the covered attacks, buffs and spells. We also began looking at how to teach your pet new skills by applying pet talents.
• Part 5: We covered levels 21 through 40. We ended up with you getting your epic riding mount and you now can wear mail. From now on completing quests and gaining levels will be much faster.

Now that we know where we have been, let's focus on where we are going. This week we'll be covering 20 levels as we work our way from level 41 though 60. We'll also take our first tentative steps off Azeroth as we head into Outlands.

Every Wednesday, Chase Christian of Encrypted Text invites you to enter the world of shadows, as we explore the secrets and mechanics of the rogue class. This week, we talk about leveling a rogue from level 11 to level 50.

As we discussed in the comments last week, rogues play fairly simple for the first several levels. Without any real finesse techniques and the simplest of opponents, there's no reason to do anything besides run up to an enemy and just start swinging away. It may not seem very rogue-like in nature, but that is because low level rogues are still learning the tricks of the trade.

The trip from 11 to 50 will be much of the same. We receive a few awesome new abilities that help us in a few situations, but until level 50, we don't really see any of rogue that you can expect to play at 80. Luckily, at 50, you get a completely new skill set that will rewrite how you play your rogue. With the mount changes to allow low levels to ride epic mounts, you'll be jetting around and having a great time questing and finding enemies to slay. Let's not get ahead of ourselves, you've still need to get to level 50 first, and so read on for full details on the process.

Welcome to Lichborne, your weekly peek into the world of the death knight. Your host, Daniel Whitcomb, is enjoying the most wonderful time of the year, when a death knight can hang around in his natural habitat all day long without seeming creepy. Or no creepier than usual, at least.

As you approach the end game of WoW, one thing you may find out quickly is that the proper use of macros is a great way to take your game to the next level. Sometimes they streamline moves, other times they allow you to perform actions that would be otherwise impossible. Death knights are definitely no exception, and though we'd be here all week if I went through all the ins and out of macro theory, or even death knight macro theory, I figure right now is still a good time to get you started.

Let's look at a few basic essential macros for the various roles and trees of the class.

Each week Dominic Hobbs brings you Blood Pact. The weak mind fears the darkness because it holds the unknown. Blood Pact knows what resides in the shadows and yes, they should be afraid.

I was afflicted with some kind of corruption of my own last week, not sure if a warrior spell reflected it or what but it had me out of action either way. I don't know how much attention you pay to spell icons but it took me a little while to realize just how nasty the icon for Corruption really is -- nasty enough for China to censor it, in fact. It speaks well of how I was feeling, but hopefully the articles on the PTR changes kept you topped off with warlock goodness in Blood Pact's absence.

This week we're looking at starting a new warlock. This could be for someone new to the game, or rolling an alt. Either way, now is a great time to start leveling as a lot of the world you'll be passing through will be changing with the advent of Cataclysm. So if you've never played a warlock, or even if you have, then get onto that character selection screen and stare blankly at the screen for half an hour while you try to think of that perfect warlock name.

Every week, Raid Rx will help you quarterback your healers to victory! Your host is Matt Low, the grand poobah of World of Matticus and a founder of No Stock UI, a WoW blog for all things UI, macro, and addon related. This week, we challenge Lord Jaraxxus!.

This is the second boss in Trial of the Crusader. After you healed through the gate bosses that comprise the Northrend Beasts, Lord Jaraxxus is the next step.

My raid group managed to get this demon lord down this past week. We got the 10-man version down several weeks ago but the 25-man version eluded us for some time. Compared to Northrend Beasts, this boss should feel relatively easier. Your raid will spend less time learning Lord Jaraxxus than the previous boss.

Let's check out the healing side of things, shall we?

With patch 3.3 on the PTR, the information is flowing out fast and furiously. We've had our first glimpse at the new raid, and have gotten our hands on some of the 5-man action. Lots of fun for everyone involved.

Everything that we've been publishing is listed in the handy WoW.com Guide to Patch 3.3. We've organized the information for you in a few ways. First, you can look at it week by week to see exactly what you might have missed. Second, the information is sorted into individual class sections so you can quickly and easily find out what's happening with your class. And finally, the information is sorted into a patch notes like structure so you can find out about all the details to the changes.

Check out the guide, and enjoy the patch on the PTR!