Blizzard's new Dungeon System (with built-in cross-server LFG) coming in patch 3.3 seems to have all of its bases covered, even tiny niggling details that are not yet covered in the patch notes, as this post by Zarhym proves.

What happens with Stone Keeper's Shards when you're in a PUG that takes advantage of cross-server LFG? Well, that's easy, kiddo. The system will check to see if your home realm's Wintergrasp is captured by your faction. If it is, voila! Stone Keeper's Shards for you. If not, well, you can figure it out.

As for everyone else in the group, the same check is made, and if someone else doesn't have WG captured on their server and you do, they won't even see the Shards on the corpse, so no "Hey, what about MY shards?!" loot confusion should come up. If it does, well, you'll probably never see that person again anyway, so say what you must! Just bear in mind that parties in patch 3.3 do have that new Vote Kick option.

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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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Welcome back to The Queue, WoW.com's daily Q&A column where the WoW.com team answers your questions about the World of Warcraft. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

A simple question instead of an introduction.



Go get her, Ray!

Some music too which you can listen to while reading today's Queue. And some more. Don't watch the videos, they're dumb. But the music is great.

Angus asked...

"Why is there a defense channel for every zone? Specifically, why would anyone be attacking the Twisting Nether? I found this to be my most amusing channel. The raid or instance ones are funny, but this one always cracks me up."

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

Over the past few weeks, Insider Trader has been discussing and analyzing the changes to professions set to go live with patch 3.2:

• Patch 3.2 Profession Change Analysis takes an in-depth look at the early announcements.
• Patch 3.2 Q&A answers questions being asked in the WoW community.
  
• Recently, a rather large list of Patch 3.2 Engineering Changes was released.

This week's column will be devoted to updating you on some of the newer changes, clarifying as many details as possible, and analyzing some of those juicy Engineering changes.

The Public Test Realm for Patch 3.2 is in full swing, and even though the Argent Coliseum isn't available for testing just yet, there's a brand-new wing in Wintergrasp's Vault of Archavon housing a brand-new giant to beat up. Enter Koralon, the Flame Watcher.

He's a stout fellow, and you probably recognize his model, which he shares with Volkhan from Halls of Lightning and Ignis from Ulduar, replete with crotch-pot. And as you may have also guessed, he uses fire spells and abilities. He doesn't currently drop loot on the PTR, though I assume the distribution will be much the same as it is with Emalon -- two or so pieces of Tier 9 gear along with a lion's share of PVP items.

Impressions and strategy after the jump.

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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Here's a change that will probably be by turns amusing, exasperating, or a relief, depending on who you are and how you play: In a new section recently slipped into the official 3.2 PTR patch notes, Blizzard revealed that they plan to add a queue to Wintergrasp in Patch 3.2.

In short, you can queue up by visiting a Battlemaster or entering the zone within 15 minutes of the game start. Only 100 people will be allowed to fight on each side of the battle, to be chosen randomly from the battlemaster and from the zone, with level 80s receiving highest priority.

When Wintergrasp was first introduced, even people who otherwise disliked PvP found it fun, and some old-timers found it be about the closest thing to the fabled world PvP battles of old in Hillsbrad, Ashenvale, and other such places.

• The second edition of the Hearthstone Tavern podcast has gone live, this week featuring many new lore and RP segments.
• Alterac Volley is feeling the hurt of Blizzard discouraging players from going to Wintergrasp. Do you still go to Wintergrasp, even after the change to the daily quests?
• Again, we're a few days late, but all of our RPers out there should answer Anna's Friday Five!
• So... the Glyph of Disease is kind of terrible, says Runeforge Gossip.

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.

Welcome home to WoW.com. Moving into a new place can be hectic, but we think our new digs at WoW.com are pretty darn comfy. In addition to a fresh face and identity for WoW Insider, we've introduced the beta launch of WoW.com Profiles. Show off your characters with a profile on WoW.com. By downloading the WoW.com addon, you can also keep all of your friends up to date on what you're doing in game, and make blog posts and upload screenshots directly from your game client.

Not a big fan of the social media scene? You don't have to change a thing – WoW.com offers all the old content you know (and hopefully love) so well. "If I'm being honest, when I first saw that the site had changed, I didn't really 'feel it,'" commented reader Retropally. "After days of it sinking in, I'm loving it. The new theme is awesome -- and really, nothing has changed in the way of the posts that are written ..."

Join the [1.Local] gang and add your thoughts about our new look and social features -- and hop on across the fold to see what else readers were chatting about during the past week.

Ah, Wintergrasp. The first 'fun' PvP content I've ever come across in-game. The first time I found myself in the Keep, around level 75, I wasn't sure what I was supposed to do. All I knew for sure was that there were monsters outside the gates who smelled prime, young night elf and wanted my blood. Then a friend showed me how to max out my mining in an hour thanks to all the lovely nodes of saronite and titanium and I started to like the place more. I really got into the zone at 80 and found the battles immense fun and short enough even for my lax attention span.

But, of course, there were problems. The Horde seem to out number us Alliance on my server and they're also a hell of a lot more organised. For them, Wintergrasp isn't just a sport, it's a carefully planned massacre. but, despite the instability, the DCs, the insufferable lag, it was fun. But I was keen to find out if Blizzard had plans to fix the problems so I asked Tom Chilton. He he specifically mentioned the issues of Wintergrasp and that they didn't think that the lag and other issues "was an acceptable play environment situation". So Blizzard did the 'smart' thing -- they nerfed it. Boo.

So readers? What do you think of the weekly quests? Do you think nerfing Wintergrasp was the way to go? Now you only have to do them once every seven days, do you think you will do the battles less? Are you pleased you now get more Shards for the quests? Can't care less? Tell us!

Good morning Europe! How are we all this week? Enjoying Azeroth? As usual, it's maintenance time once more and today there is a little extra excitement in the form of patch 3.1.2.

So with this in mind, all the European realms will be down between 3am and 11am CEST. Taking into account past weeks, this can change. The realms could be up by 8am or still down at noon. I will of course have my one eye fixed on the breaking news box and will update if and when one is needed.

So to keep you occupied, Daniel has once again come up with a witty morning of the patch post offering things to keep you occupied. Personally I'm rather excited, there's so much in this patch, from the equipment manager (note to self: go dual spec as soon as the realms return), Innervate (Druids FTW!) and those shiny new textures for the Argent Tournament mounts. Lovely. I just wish I could be so happy about the nerfing of the Wintergrasp dailies but c'est la vie.

We noted an error earlier this evening which was causing the Lake Wintergrasp PvP zone to be reset prematurely. Since ending epic battles early is a bad thing, Blizzard has gone ahead and "shut off Wintergrasp" completely for the time being.

This change is affecting all realms.

There is no word when a fix will come through, but we're hopeful it will happen sometime soon. Disabling an entire part of the game is a big thing, and an error that usually is corrected quickly.

Some speculation points to the change in daily (now weekly) quests that just went in, however there is no evidence to support this.

We're getting tons of reports in of Wintergrasp behaving a bit oddly today, and I can confirm them to be true on my home server of Cenarion Circle. Wintergrasp battles are lasting, at most, 5-10 minutes with no more than 10 minutes between battles. Good for farming Marks of Honor, not so good for trying to kill Archavon and/or Emalon.

If this is how you try to lower the lag Wintergrasp causes on servers, I think the quote "ur doin it wrong" applies. In all seriousness, I'm kidding about that and this is obviously not working as intended. Considering the Mark and Honor gains people are getting from this, I wouldn't be surprised if we see some emergency maintenance and rollbacks soon. I wouldn't get too attached to your gains this afternoon.

We took to the virtual airwaves yet again last Wednesday, and despite a few audio issues (curse you, Ret Monkey!), we got a nice show in, including some talk about what's coming down in the PTR, including the changes in Wintergrasp. And as usual, we answer your emails -- this week's panel of Amanda Dean, Lesley Smith, and Turpster and I have all kinds of useful advice for you readers. Listen in and maybe you'll learn something.

And of course, next Saturday at 3:30pm Eastern is our big video show, featuring actual web video of all your favorite WoW Insider folks, and a few special guests, too. Plus, after the show, we're going to be hanging out on the It Came from the Blog realm of Zangarmarsh, where Turpster and I will duel, Peggle-style. Definitely be sure not to miss it -- we'll see you then.

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The other week, I finally took my druid into Ulduar for the first time. The instance has been calling to me for weeks, but my guild has only just started EoE. Having spent all our time prior to 3.1 in Naxx, we've only now got to the point when we're all in enough epics to survive for more than five minutes. So we went in, grabbed vehicles and started downing towers and other random buildings. Then it was time for a meet and greet with one F. Leviathan. Needless to say we didn't just wipe, we crashed and burned, but I found the use of vehicles interesting, even if the controls infuriated me beyond belief.

I've done my time in Wintergrasp and I love it, especially when you can hitch a ride and let someone else do all the shooting (/joke). However I've always found the targeting system a little awkward. The vehicle interface in general feels clunky -- particularly when you're doing certain quests. Wintergrasp is bearable, but boss combat means you have to be more on your toes, especially when it's a team effort between the people driving and those who are unleashing hell upon Flame Leviathan and its minions.

So I'm quite curious to know what you guys think of the use of vehicles in WoW. Do you like the interface? Is there enough variety? How do you find using them in PvE combat in Ulduar? What about Wintergrasp? Do you wish we could have those flying vehicles mentioned way back at the WWI? Drop your comments in the box and cast your vote in our poll below.

Zarhym recently took to the forums defending Blizzard's recent tinkering with Wintergrasp on the test realms when one a poster threw the accusation that rather than optimize the servers to handle Wintergrasp lag, Blizzard instead chose to make the zone and games less rewarding to play. Although that's not exactly how Zarhym would describe it, the changes are clearly designed to reduce the number of people in the zone.

Crygil's post about the change from Daily quests to Weekly ones -- conceivably a first for the game -- note that the changes were being explored "In an effort to better balance the amount of players that are in Wintergrasp at any given time". No matter how Blizzard tries to spin it, they're trying to dissuade players from participating in Wintergrasp. This is a bad idea. There's something epic about Wintergrasp, and it's not (just) the lag. Considering it's obviously one of their most popular game features in Wrath, it's ironic they're taking steps to curtail its success.