Bonc asked...

"When we get cross server LFG, what will happen to VoA, for example if I dont have it on my server, can I go to another and get in there, does it go by raid leaders server?"

First of all, I need to thank each and every one of you for participating in our Beta launch, and providing your comments, bug reports and suggestions. Keep them coming!

We have had many questions today, which has helped us refine our Help Guides, and prompted us to write up a FAQ. Because this is a Beta test, you can expect that we will add to it as the site develops.

We would also like to request that before you send in your questions and bug reports, you check out the aforementioned official FAQ to see if we've already written up answers.

And don't forget to hop onto Twitter, because we're using our page as a platform for giveaways, news, and launch-related information!

Ladies! Gentlemen! Children of all ages! We, the writers, editors, and innocent bystanders at WoW Insider would like to welcome you all to our new home: WoW.com.

Our new domain serves a broader purpose than saving your typing fingers a few characters, though. You've probably already noticed our new, more streamlined design -- all the better for providing you with more content and less clutter. But in addition to the content you all know and (hopefully) love, we'd like to introduce you to the beta launch of WoW.com Profiles. By creating a profile on WoW.com you can:

• show off your characters
• make blog posts & galleries to share with others
• communicate with your guild & your friends
• let everyone know what you're up to in the game we all love
• by downloading the WoW.com addon (for PC or Mac), 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.

Sound interesting? Head over and sign up (you can use an existing AIM or Facebook login) and start getting involved in the WoW.com community! (Having trouble? Take a look at our getting started guide or send us an e-mail explaining the problem. We'll help you figure it out!)

Please remember, WoW.com Profiles are still in beta -- while we already have lots of ideas for the future, we want to hear from you about what we're doing wrong (or right!) to help us improve it. And before you even start protesting, we're aware that Profiles currently only work with characters in the US armory. (Though, to readers not on US servers, you can certainly create an account and participate on WoW.com Profiles -- you just aren't able to add characters. We're starting small with this beta run, but hope to have the ability for everyone to join us soon!)

Thank you to all of our readers for your support and unbridled enthusiasm over the years! Though the site may have changed, the WoW Insider content you're all familiar with isn't going anywhere. As WoW.com we plan on continuing to provide you with the latest news and community from the World of Warcraft.

- the WoW.com team

Sometimes you'd like to know that there are other MMOs out there, right? Our sister site Massively can provide you with everything you need to know about all MMOs, including WoW! Check out this roundup of the latest news from the wider MMO world.

	First official confirmation that new Blizzard MMO is original IP In a post on the official World of Warcraft forums, Blizzard community manager Zarhym came out and said the new MMO was in fact an original IP, saying, "We have nothing to advertise for the new MMO because it's a shell of a game thus far. We've already stated it'll be a brand new franchise, which means the lore, art, and game play are being developed entirely from scratch. It's an overwhelming process, but a process through which we excel. Our track record supports this."
	Runes of Magic reaches 1 million registered users Here we are, not even two full months after the release of Frogster's Runes of Magic, and they're already announcing that they've hit the one million registered user milestone. Not only has this announcement come so soon after launch, but the EU and NA public hasn't even known about the game for a year yet, according to the Berlin-based publisher.
	Free Realms destroys the 1 million account speed record We've known it was going to be a strong contender since the first time we laid eyes on Free Realms. Once we stepped into the world last month and started playing the game, we knew it was going to be even bigger than we'd previously thought. Sure enough, we were right. News has come out this morning, courtesy of John Smedley on Twitter, that Free Realms crossed the 1 million account mark in just eighteen days since launch.
	Massively introduces: Betawatch! Welcome to Betawatch, Massively's newest weekly report on the state of MMO betas. In each installment, we'll report everything from the latest open betas, closed betas and even alphas in one convenient place. Plus, we'll make sure to include as much info on each game's current status, including projected release dates (if known) and links to the sign-up forms to get yourself into that beta you've been seeking.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, we plagiarize from Stephen Hawking, jack a WABAC Machine, and begin a joyride through the evolution of the Druid class.

Dear Blizzard,

There are too many bosses to write about in Ulduar. I find this vexing. Please eliminate 5.

Sincerely,

Sleepless in Silithus

Salutations, Druids. As is probably obvious, we're going to take a detour out of Ulduar class strategy this week, because I'm going to shoot myself if I have to write about another boss I haven't been able to smack around since the PTR. We'll be back for Freya, Thorim, and assorted vaguely Norse-sounding entitites wishing to destroy the world for some unspecified reason but they drop phat lewtz so who cares next week.

Anyway, one of the things that's fascinated me about the Druid class since Burning Crusade is the growth in its popularity. Historically we have never been among the more commonly-played classes, and for a wide swathe of classic WoW and BC, were actually the least-played class or within the bottom 3. While there are various reasons for this (and I could devote a column to how this probably happened), Druids became more popular as time went on, and an increasing number of people began to play the class without knowing just how far it's come.

A little time spent reading through Wowwiki's list of the game's patches makes for interesting reading. A little more than 5 years ago, Druids could Feign Death, the Feral 31-point talent was Improved Pounce, and Moonkin form wasn't even in a gleam in a designer's eye.

While browsing the General Discussion forums the other day, I noticed a recently-resurrected 2007 thread collecting players' oldest screenshots. Due to the age of the thread, some of the links (mostly on the first two pages) are dead and gone, which was really disappointing because some of them sound great, but there are plenty of good ones. Among the best are the character creation screen during beta, the old Troll epic mount, and -- according to Gorhendizzle of Bloodhoof on page 5 -- the first publicity screenshot Blizz ever released. I don't know whether that's true, but trying to figure out what the screenshot is of is driving me nuts. It looks like Elwynn, but I can't tell where.

My own oldest screenshot (see above) is fairly tame by comparison; I had just turned 41, and was proudly astride my new kodo on a starry night outside Orgrimmar. What (if anything) prompted you to start snapping ingame pictures? Are there any historical gems buried in your own screenshot folder? Search your hard drive; you know it to be true.

The OC Register has a great breakdown of what Activision said on their earnings conference call today. Perhaps the biggest WoW-related stat to come out of the call is that the number of subscribers to the game has apparently leveled off: they're holding steady at 11.5 million. Which is nothing to cough at, but it's what we were told four months ago, and if, as Ghostcrawler claimed, the numbers are still going up, then they're going up very, very slowly. Morhaime says that numbers are growing everywhere, but that China will be a main focus of growth this year as Wrath of the Lich King releases there soon.

In non-WoW Blizzard news, the Starcraft 2 beta will start this summer and will be the "final" phase of development for that game. The new Battle.net interface will be tested then as well, so keep an eye out for that. And Blizzard expects big things there in China also -- NetEase, the company that will now be handling Wrath's launch, is already set up to run both Diablo III and Starcraft 2 out there, so it'll all be under one umbrella.

In short, there's no really bad news from Blizzard, but no really great news either -- the best news to come out of the call is that even in the slow economy lately, Blizzard is holding steady. Not a bad thing at all, but we probably won't see any spikes in player interest in Blizzard or WoW until they announce what's next on the content plate, whether that be at BlizzCon or before.

Our sister site Joystiq pointed out last night to their readers that the BlizzCon 2008 beta codes were now being accepted, and we thought it prudent to pass the news along to you.

You can enter the code over at http://www.blizzcon.com/beta and enjoy the satisfaction that you'll get knowing in a few months (or less?) you'll be playing the beta of StarCraft II.

The code took me a few others on staff a couple tries to enter. 'B' looks like '8', and 'S' looks like '8'. You'll probably need to try a few different permutations of the code until you get it right. When you enter the right code, you'll get an email 'confirmation' that really just tells you that you've entered the key successfully. You don't have to do anything further. The email is a little oddly worded though, and doesn't look like your typical Blizzard email. So we've posted a copy of it after the break for folks.

BlizzCon 2009 is coming up on August 21st and 22nd of this year. We'll be there in force again. Should be a blast!

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

Before we get started today, I just wanted to take a moment and mention that I'm working on a Special Edition (super special!) of The Queue focusing on Dual Specs. It won't interrupt our regular daily doses of The Queue, it'll come seperately. It might take me awhile to piece it together because people have asked a lot of Dual Spec questions, but it's coming! Slowly but surely.

jam asked...

What happened to the new instance that was supposed to be in Un'Goro crater, accessible only by through the Waygate in Sholazar Basin?

Activision-Blizzard held a conference call for the press yesterday, and so there's all kinds of financial and release news floating around out there. The biggest news isn't necessarily Blizzard-related, but it does mean that our game's company is finally feeling the crunch a bit: Activision-Blizzard reported a loss of $72 million in the last quarter, and their outlook for the coming year fell short of analysts' expectations. Even though that sounds bad, it doesn't mean things are necessarily bad, though: Blizzard themselves added nearly a billion dollars to the total, so while A-B might not be doing so well, B is doing just fine.

Blizzard CEO Paul Sams also announced during the call that the company is now aiming for "one 'frontline' title per year," though not necessarily World of Warcraft related. That likely means that we'll see the first Starcraft 2 this year -- our friends at Joystiq have a quick report on the beta appearing soon, as well as the Battle.net revamp we've been waiting for. And it also means that (unless Blizzard is really rolling on Diablo III, which I doubt, given its condition when we played it at last year's BlizzCon), that we'll be looking at mid/late 2010 for the release of the next WoW expansion.

Besides the loss of the $72 million (it's always in the last place you look), things seem to be hopping at Blizzard and their parent company. Should be a pretty busy 2009 for them.

You can head over the EU PTR forums, and you'll notice that they've been wiped clean and are up and running. They contain links to all the class changes already released, but no actual PTR patch notes.

Interestingly, several people are reporting that they're able to copy characters over successfully.

This is rather surprising, because despite the recent class changes many of us weren't expecting the PTR until next week at the earliest. Perhaps this is a sign that it'll come earlier, or at least is in the "getting ready" stage for public release.

This PTR is going to be huge, on the scale of patch 2.4 when they released the Sunwell.

We'll have more up on WoW Insider the second we hear it, and don't forget to check out our coverage of Patch 3.1.

Update 12:45 p.m. EST: We're getting several reports that US/NA people can copy over characters to the US PTR now.

On Thursday, January 8th Nethaera sent out a memo to all the fan sites asking them to announce it, and Eyonix posted on the forums for all the rest of us. Latency and connectivity issues will be fixed in patch 3.0.8. The crowds cheered, babies cried in joy, and dog and cats started to live together. The world would be right again.

Fast forward 15 days later.

The high latency while raiding places like Naxxramas and Malygos is still there. The servers are still packed with queue. The patch was a near disaster. And we're still getting bug reports in every 10 minutes, both in comments and via our tip-line.

Many people want to know why this hasn't been fixed. People are out looking for blood. The whole head on a pike sort of thing.

A better way to approach the situation is to try to come up with contingency plans and other activities to do. If Blizzard cannot get their servers to work, to the point that many consider the game playable, then people will need to focus on other aspects of the game or try to work around the problematic parts.

On the couple servers I play on many of the top guilds have decided to stop raiding for the night if there are any problems with high latency in the raid instances. On Alex's server people raid only for a couple hours after 10pm when the queues and population have dropped off. And still other guilds I know have just said forget it completely and are on hiatus until these issues are fixed.

In the latest PTR patch Titanguard, the new weapon enchant that will be introduced with patch 3.0.8, was removed from the vendor. Titanguard provided a weapon with +75 Stamina. Many people felt this was the tanking enchant for Wrath.

Because of its removal from the vendor, many people thought that it wasn't going to appear when 3.0.8 goes live. Many folks have sent us tips via our tip line saying as much, and the official forums have multiple speculation posts on the subject.

However it appears that the removal was accidental and that by all indications Titanguard will be showing up in the live version. Maaven, the Blizzard blue poster over in the PTR forums, tells us all: "We'll investigate." Since they have been rather forthcoming lately as to the removal of PTR items (see the information about Death Knight tanking weapons), we're taking this to mean it's just a temporary issue.

"Don't Panic" tanks! That sexy 75 stamina will be yours soon enough.