Crygil wants to know: if you could design a new holiday for the game, what would it be? I don't think I've ever heard the question asked before -- holidays are really just optional fun for more players, and Blizzard has always covered the basics (Christmas, New Year's, Thanksgiving, Halloween, etc.), and even added in some of their own by giving real-world holidays some Azerothian flavor (Midsummer Fire Festival, and of course Brewfest). Are there really any holidays they missed?

I guess Labor Day and Memorial Day are the two biggest ones -- maybe all of the NPCs could take a day off, there could be giant barbeques set up in the capital cities, or players could take a day to remember those fallen in the past wars. Or you could go another route and just make up your own holiday: Grumpyfool of Azjol-Nerub recommends Gnome Appreciation Week (a whole week?), where Azeroth's shortest denizens can get some love of their own. A more recently based holiday might be fun, too -- maybe once a year we could remember Arthas' (it was Arthas, right?) zombie attack on our homeland.

I doubt this is going to be used to determine actual Blizzard policy. Seems more like just a fun thought experiment. But there are definitely some interesting ideas in there -- if Blizzard ever wants to add yet another holiday to the calendar, there are plenty of ideas.

Elizabeth's wishes have been answered -- in-game Easter holiday Noblegarden has been extended to a full week according to the calendar on the PTR. That's six more days to run around getting eggs, not to mention doing all of the new Noblegarden achievements being included in the holiday. In the past, Noblegarden hasn't meant that much to players -- the rewards were never that great, and the fact that it was on only one day (a day usually reserved by most celebrating for family dinners away from the game) made it much less active than it could have been. But Blizzard has revamped the holiday, apparently, so be on the lookout for some eggs and bunnies starting on Sunday, April 12th.

One quick note for those of you worried about your Violet Proto-drakes: apparently still none of the Nobelgarden quests are included in the meta achievement. So there won't be any Bags of Candy or monthly Brews to get -- just enjoy the festivities.

And we'll give a shout-out to Kisirani here as well -- since she took over World Events on the Blizzard team, we've seen some great changes. Despite the issues with the Zombie launch event for Wrath, it was still a ton of fun, and we're pretty sure that she and her team also been behind the popular Brewfest and Hallow's End holidays as well. Excellent work -- we can't wait to see what the new Noblegarden is like.

This morning Nethaera, a community manager with Blizzard, posted the following on the general forums: "Perhaps something will be occurring before [the release of Wrath]. I guess it's something we'll have to wait and see."

This comes in a response to a question asking if there will be a couple more surprises before Wrath of the Lich King.

Of course Neth is being her usual vague self here, not really committing to anything one way or another. But the comment does raise an eyebrow, and the fact that she even decided to respond to the question without a definitive "no" is good enough to speculate that there might be another world event headed our way.

Three days and counting. There's so much excitement for the newest expansion -- I mean, look at us here at WoW Insider, we're going crazy giving away all sorts of wonderful swag just to celebrate the coming of Wrath (and probably to make up in advance for us not being around while we're busy playing the game. Sorry guys). What's happening inside the game to prepare us for Northrend?

Well, at the moment, it looks like... nothing. I mean, there was that phenomenally fun zombie invasion. I know a few of you found it annoying and disruptive, but come on! It was a game-changing event that really shook up Azeroth, even if only for a few days. When the zombie infestation ended earlier than we anticipated anticlimactically, we sort of expected something better to come. Well, it's been about a week now, and there's nothing new. Sure, the scourge invasion's still happening, but after hundreds and hundreds of Necrotic Runes and nothing else to buy, it's really kind of boring.

So was that it? An inspired zombie invasion and then nothing? That's kind of like running out of gas nearing the finish line. It's like opening the champagne before the guests arrive. If the zombie invasion had started a few days ago, I think the timing would've been absolutely perfect. Instead, our excitement (and sometimes frustration) got built up, escalating over a few days, then... poof. Nothing. It's like having a great first course of a meal and having the next course arrive so late that we've lost our appetite. How do you guys feel? Did Blizzard blow the timing of the zombie event? What else do they have planned? Whatever it is, they've only got a couple of days to unleash it.

We've been covering the news about Tenris Mirkblood, a temporary Scourge boss hanging out in Karazhan. Adam even has a handy strategy guide that will help you bring him down. The boss is pretty neat, dropping both a non-combat pet and the ultimate in two handed guitars -- the Arcanite Ripper.

Tigole warned us that the boss would only be around for about 10 days. As of just now, Tenris is still in Karazhan, waiting to dole out his badges, batlings, and axes. Now's the time to get in there, folks. We can't gaurantee how much longer he's going to be waiting for you to come kill him. The Scourge invasion reset and started again after it previously closed down, so this is probably as close to a "second chance" as you're going to get.

As a tip, be sure to pick up your Vampiric Batling, even if you already know the spell. The "Already Known" item sells for 10 gold to a vendor. Killing Tenris is at least worth a daily quest to you.

As of 3PM PDT (6 PM by WoW Insider's clock) the Scourge are retreating from Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms on most servers, and the Scourge Invasion has come to a close... for now. In each of the capital cities there is still an Argent Dawn Champion handing out their Stamina consumables, as well as Argent Quartermaster so you can spend the last of your Necrotic Runes. The necropoleis, however, are all gone.

I fully expect we'll see something else crop up in the next week, not only because Tigole said so, but because it'd be really weird if the final week leading to Northrend is completely barren. There are also things we know are coming but aren't here yet... but those are spoilers, so we won't go into detail.

If anything happens, we'll make sure you hear about it, so keep an eye out. I doubt anything will happen this evening, but I've been wrong before.

Our podcast was back on the air last Saturday, and we were happy to welcome two very talented bloggers to the mix: both Daniel "BigRedKitty" Howell and John "BigBearButt" Patricelli, authors of our BRK and Shifting Perspectives columns, respectively, were aboard to chat with us about whether the endgame is just too easy lately (or whether it's nice that some people who couldn't before are seeing instances and getting loot), the new boss in Karazhan, and how abruptly the zombie event ended. We also hit on Blizzard's almost-mistake with the class forums, and if we really deserved that three-day credit due to lag and queues lately.

We answered emails as well -- BRK gave some great AH tips for when to get rid of your primals and mats before Wrath, and BBB helped a listener out who was wondering if he should play a Druid or a Warlock to 80 first. And I got some good glyph hints and tips out of the guys in terms of what to put in those glyph slots for Hunters and Feral Druids. If you have a comment or question for the show, feel free to send it along to theshow at wowinsider dot com, and you might even hear it on next week's show.

Perhaps most exciting, we worked a lot last week to make sure the quality of the show was better, and I think for the most part it worked -- we didn't have a single disconnect during the chat, and you should find that the tinny voices in the recording are gone as well. It's not perfect yet, and there's more we want to add into the mix, but we're working on it. The iTunes feed is still on the fritz, but the RSS feed below works just fine for me and it should for you, too. Be sure to tune in next week at 3:30pm Eastern -- we do this live every Saturday, and it is a darn good time.

[Ustream] Listen to the unedited recording in Ustream.
[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Should be a great show tomorrow on the podcast, as we welcome two terrific WoW bloggers to the table. In one place together for the first (second? third?) time ever, both Daniel "BigRedKitty" Howell (who has his own very popular, very well-done podcast, by the way, if you haven't heard it yet) and John "BigBearButt" Patricelli will be in attendance. And we'll be talking about, as usual, all the biggest stories from the past week in Warcraft, including how the new Kara boss is going (and almost gone), whether Karazhan itself is too easy these days, and that whole class forums megaton yesterday (that turned out to be a dud, more or less). And we'll cover the end of the zombie event, too, and whether or not it worked the way Blizzard planned it to, or if they cut it short early because of all the griefing.

The show will air live at 3:30pm Eastern (time zone calculator) over on our Ustream page. Lots of people have had questions about how to get the show lately (and of course, it hasn't helped that our feed is going through some growing pains), but all of your questions should be answered in our last podcast post. And we're working on the quality issues, too -- I can assure you that the recording issue has been fixed, so no more tinny voices this week.

But you don't want to wait until the recording anyway -- join us on the Ustream page tomorrow (or just come back to this post -- the stream is embedded after the break), and you can chat with us and other listeners live, as well as vote in polls and participate in a rumored "aftershow" that's been popping up after we're done recording lately. See you tomorrow!

This isn't EgadPit's first time on Moviewatch, as he'd previously been featured for his work with the Warchief Debates 2008. Using the soundtrack to a Simon Pegg skit, Do you speak English? tells the tale of a blood elf whose conveyance breaks down.

She asks a nearby undead for some help, only to find out that they "don't speak the same language." It's a short video, and pretty funny. I'm not sure how much of the funny is due to EgadPit, and how much is due to the machinima, but the overall effect is worth a laugh or three. I found the use of screen space to be pretty simple and clean, which puts a lot of focus on the dialogue between characters.

Still, I'm not sure it's as strong as the Warchief Debates. To be fair, the debates benefit from timeliness. What's your opinion?

Previously on Moviewatch...

Forget Fox News -- the Times Online has an analysis up of Blizzard's zombies event, and their main point seems to be that you can't compare a plague outbreak in the World of Warcraft to one in real life. Risk is what defines real outbreaks, and since there was really no risk in whether you became a zombie or not, players didn't necessarily act as they would in the real world. Some players even willingly submitted to infection, which of course presumably wouldn't happen with a real widespread fatal disease.

But there are parallels to be drawn, and professors say that the zombie plague worked a little closer to real life than Hakkar's corrupted blood did (no coincidence, I'm sure, that the zombie plague was designed to be spread, while the Corrupted Blood was basically a bug). While the plague never did really infect everyone in the world, it did spread pretty quickly -- apparently there's a number you can use to track how quickly a disease spreads, and the zombie plague landed in the arena of a normal outbreak of smallpox (given, of course, that we don't know exactly how fast or how widely it spread).

Very interesting. There is still more to say about this plague, I think (and though things have slowed down on the realms, hopefully the event itself isn't completely over). But it is fascinating how Blizzard turned emergent gameplay into an official event, and how they mimicked the real-life qualities of a spreading disease (the more of it around, the more likely you were to pick it up) while still leaving the idea firmly grounded in the in-game lore. Very cool indeed.

FOX news picked up the story of the big zombie invasion, citing that the plague came to an end on Tuesday. They covered the event as a deliberate contagion that, if left "untreated," would turn you into one of the "flesh-eating zombies." Like our own Mike Schramm, FOX parallels this purposeful in-game disease with the previous accidental "Corrupted Blood" plague.

I love it when WoW is in the news. I love it even more when the media's not talking about us being game-addicted fiends smashing the buttons for our Pavlovian treat. While FOX's story isn't exactly ground-breaking info for those of us toiling against the continuing Scourge invasion, it might reach a few of our friends and coworkers and convince them to give WoW a try.

Or, this coverage could just be another sign of the impact Blizzard's game is having on the mainstream, while that 11 million subscriber base just keeps growing. And, yup, FOX's article does mention the upcoming Wrath release, so it's certainly possible Blizzard will see a few more players from the coverage. Every time WoW has an event like this which has mainstream interest, there'll be a few more people logging for the first time to see what the buzz is about. And, hey, it certainly lines up with the Holiday theme.

While it's not something new exactly, it seems a lot of people haven't quite seen it happen yet. Along with the Scourge Invasion in places like the Burning Steppes, Azshara, and other points around the world, the invasion has hit some of the capital cities. Every now and then a strike team of Scourge, a Pallid Horror and Flameshockers, will spawn in a capital city and start attacking nearby guards and NPCs. When defeated, they'll leave behind a broken Necrotic Crystal which will have a quest for you.

This is something exclusive to the invasion, but it's not something that just started happening today, and not the next step/phase of the event. A lot of people are under the impression that it is simply because it happens so infrequently. It really is rather cool when it happens, though. The first time I saw it was back in 2006 when this event happened the first time. Since I roleplay when I'm not raiding, I was sitting in the Cathedral of Light in Stormwind just yapping away with some people. The Scourge actually spawn in the 'basement' of the Cathedral, so my first experience with them was seeing them rise up out of the catacombs. Freaky? I think so!

Ah, zombie apocalypse. We hardly knew you. Your sudden departure leaves a lot of us confused, even if Blizzard swears it was all on purpose and according to plan.

Regardless, the zombie plague seems to be over for now. We talked last week about how you could roleplay your sudden transformation into the undead brain muncher. Now, let's take a bit to talk about how your survivors are going to be feeling about this mess.

• Remorse. If you acknowlege that you died, came back as a zombie, died as a zombie, and came back yet again as a humanoid race, then you should probably acknowledge that you did some pretty horrible things. It's one thing to think, "My God, I ate the neighbor's cat," but there's a whole level of horror involved with "My God, I ate the neighbor!"
  
  This also supplies that most beloved motivation for roleplayers everywhere -- angst. You can be horrified ("I ate the neighbor!"), angsty ("And I liked it!"), and perhaps even be corrupted ("I'd do it again!"). If the memory of your wanton deeds aren't enough to sustain your remorseful roleplay, you can look to further naughty urges to supply more angst.
  

Here's episode number 61 of the WoW Insider Show, recorded last Saturday over on our Ustream page. On the show last week, we welcomed WoW Insider's Matthew Rossi back to the virtual airwaves, along with blogger Amanda Dean and our good friend Duncor of WoW Radio. And we talked a little more about achievements and which ones we liked the most, what was going on with all the zombie action, and of course since Rossi was around, we churned up some good discussion about what's up with Warriors, other tanks, and Shamans since the big Wrath patch.

Lots of people have been asking questions about how to get the show, so after the break, I've included an exhaustive guide to how you can get our show nowadays. I apologize to everyone who's had problems so far -- obviously, with the switch from WoW Radio, we've had to deal with some tech roadblocks, but if you check after the break, you should find a way to listen to the show that fits what you want to do.

Thanks for listening -- we'll be back as always next week!

[Ustream] Listen to the unedited recording in Ustream.
[RSS] Add the WoW Insider Show to your RSS aggregator.
[MP3] Download the MP3 directly.

Or listen to Episode 61 right here:

So the zombie invasion's over, huh? Just like that, the coolest World Event to ever hit Azeroth was gone just as quickly as it arrived. If you didn't log on this past week, you likely missed what was one of the most chaotic and fun times in the game -- players turning into zombies, infected roaches and rats infesting cities, and hordes of Scourge knocking at our city gates. It was unique, creepy, fun, and sometimes even disruptive -- but it was one of the most well-designed events we've ever seen happen to our favorite game. And now it appears to be over.

What happened there, exactly? Just when everything was ramping up to a fine crescendo -- with the disease duration shaved down to an apocalyptic one minute and infected rats streaming out of our city sewers -- it suddenly dies out without warning or climax. No big battle. No quests to fight zombies. No conclusive finding of a cure (Grand Apothecary Putress' quest line wasn't quite anywhere near epic...). It just... ended. There were rumors of something going down at 4pm server time, but that hour came and went without so much as a bang and a clatter.

What happens now? What do you guys think is in store for Azeroth? Certainly the Lich King won't let things end in such an anti-climactic fashion, right? Arthas, the baddest of all bad guys, must have something else up his cold, icy sleeve, right? What's going to happen next? Armies of Scourge attacking cities, perhaps, or some other impressive, crazy thing. I mean, certainly things won't be status quo all the way until November 13. Or can it?