With all of the hubbub around the new LFG interface coming in patch 3.3, we haven't done much thinking lately about that other form of group play in the game, battleground PvP. But Cassandri at HoTs and DoTs has, and she has some interesting insight about what players are doing in the battlegrounds and why. She notes that some people dive off on their own, like Lone Rangers. And she hints that maybe, if these people were so persuaded, things would go better if they fought together, rather than on their own.

An interesting thought, for sure, and probably true -- while there are situations where I aim to be by myself in the battlegrounds (if I'm on my rogue and just want to hunt down some clothies), things almost always go better in there when you work as a team. So here's an idea: why not take the rewards implemented in the LFG system and apply them to better behavior in the battlegrounds?

This week, we have a quiz and a new comic to enjoy, along with updates from many of your favorites.

• Battlemasters: Into Icecrown.
• Dark Legacy Comics: C-A-T spells CAT!
• NoObz: Fifth Commandment. This one feels unfinished to me.
• Check out the latest from Teh Gladiators.
• NPC: Azerothian Feline Treatment Watch. Also, In the Can and CAPS Faux Pas. I love how randomly angry Lisa looks in the two middle panels. She's passionate about CAPS locks.
• Sparkly Doom: Casual Player is Casual.
• World of Warcraft, eh?: Invasive Maneuvers.
• Daily Quests: Life's Little Pleasures.
• LFG #303 and #304.
• Dungeons and Draenei: What is your world... of Warcraft?
• Beyond the Tree: Downbrook.
• Fail Druid fails again.
• Complex Actions: GM Bailout.
• Test your knowledge with a buffed-Quiz!

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. Alex Ziebart will be your host today.

For the curious, the original title of today's edition of The Queue was "The Queue: Adam if you skip me and write a Queue today I'm going to shiv you IRL because I'm seriously not still asleep and will have it written in a couple of hours." Luckily, he didn't skip me, so he gets to live another day.

Terethall asked...

"Will the newer 5-mans (ToC and the Icecrown Citadel 5-mans) be included in the random dungeon tool in 3.3?

Because it seems like a huge difficulty difference when you could go from extremely easy instances like Heroic CoS to extremely difficult (comparatively) Heroic instances like ToC and the IC instances."

Every Monday Scott Andrews contributes Officers' Quarters, a column about the ins and outs of guild leadership.

Much as I've done with Patch 3.2 and other major patches in the past, I'd like to examine what 3.3 will mean for officers. All major patches require some forethought and adjustment, and this one just happens to be a doozy!

Icecrown Citadel

The ultimate raid of this expansion, Icecrown Citadel is poised to be one of the most exciting raids that Blizzard has ever released. As such, I can virtually guarantee you'll have long-lost players coming out of the woodwork to get back into the raiding scene for a chance to face off with the Lich King. Make sure you review your guild's policies for inviting players to raids to make sure that slots will be awarded in a way that's as fair as possible while still giving your raid a solid chance at success.

One debate that's sure to rage among officers and raid leaders this time around is whether to extend lockouts until you beat the zone and unlock the hard mode toggle or to reset the instance each week to farm the early bosses. I'm still not sure how my guild is going to handle this. It will certainly depend on how quickly we can clear those first bosses and which bosses present more of a roadblock. If we're clearing quickly, we'll probably keep going until we hit a boss we can't beat. Then we'll reset and farm up more loot and Frost Badges.

Aside from the usual laughs and story developments, this week's hot topic seems to be the new virtual pets for real money feature from the Blizzard store. There is also some amazing artwork this week, so read on!

• Battlemasters: Pulling Rank. This marks the end of the Prologue.
• Dark Legacy Comics: YARRRRR!
• Daily Quests: It's Better Not To Ask.
• World of Warcraft, eh?: A Little Birdie Told Me. I absolutely adore the artwork in this one! I always enjoy the artwork, but this one is amazing!
• NPC: Introducing... - I love the first frame in particular. Keyboard Chloe - I like her ideas. Kitty Tips.
• Teh Gladiators: This is... The Barrens?
• NoObz: Fourth Commandment.
• Beyond the Tree: Acquired Taste.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Tiny Fists Of Panda Fury. All I can say is - awesome.
• LFG #301 and #302.
• GU Comics: Oh, Is THAT All?
• Dungeons and Draenei: Public Test Realm 3.3.
• Experience Points: Followers.
• The Scout Report #87.

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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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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Halloween is over,
and Hallows End too.
Now it's Sunday morning;
You know what to do.

• Battlemasters: Mad Cow.
• Dark Legacy Comics: The Perfect Costume.
• The Daily Quest: Wait... That's Not A Costume....
• World of Warcraft, eh: Brings Out the Best in All of Us.
• NPC: Heal Deal.
• NPC: It's Not Easy... and Trick or Mice. Bink looks so cute!
• Teh Gladiators: Their Healer Didn't LOS Enough (Mr. Chilly Bought It).
• NoObz: Third Commandment.
• Beyond the Tree: Setting Out.
• Cru the Dwarf: Hangman.
• The Adventures of Disgraph T. Dwarf: Upset Tummies. Ah the memories....
• I seem to have forgotten LFG last week. For those of you who haven't kept up on your own, check out #297, then #298, and #299, and yes, #300.
• Have some Halloween Fail Druid.

The first thing I thought when I saw the new LFG interface coming in patch 3.3 was what I said on last week's podcast: that's cool, but where's the LFG channel? If you remember way back during patch 2.0.1, when Blizzard originally released the LFG system, there was quite a clamor raised when they took away the LFG channel then, so much so that they eventually had to resurrect it. And so, when I saw in the latest patch notes that the LFG was set to return as a citywide channel, it didn't come as a surprise at all -- even in the new era of cross-realm LFG, there's still a place for just talking about which groups you can join.

But citywide still isn't enough for a lot of players -- some are saying that they want the channel to be worldwide. Ghostcrawler himself shows up in that thread and says a worldwide LFG channel would be nuts. And he's right: way back in the day when it was worldwide, it was "mass chaos," like a Barrens from everywhere. So why are people so tied to it? Blizzard seems to be missing a major way people used the LFG channel.

In the latest build of the PTR, they have updated the new looking for raid interface (now called the Raid Browser). This interface is completely separate from the new Looking for Group interface and will not share its cross-realm capabilities. This means that you'll only be raiding with the same pool of people you've been pugging raids with already.

While some people are upset at the lack of cross-realm support for raiding, others of us are relieved. This means no cross-realm raid stealing, no cross-realm ninjas, and no cross-realm toy trains for us to smash. It is also fairly difficult to get the same group of people back later to finish a raid when they're scattered across your battlegroup.

However, some of the new features include the fact that the Looking for Group channel will be turned on by default for all characters and will be available in major cities, just like Trade and General. It will also be uncoupled from the LFG and Raid Browser interfaces. This means that those people who currently spam Trade with raid requests can move over to LFG and still hit their intended audience.

Right now, it also looks like you can queue for both classic and BC era raids as well as the current level content from the interface while on a level 80 character. I'm not sure if this will stay in as a similar feature was available in the normal LFG tool, but was removed a build or two later. There are still a few rough edges, but it appears to be coming along nicely.

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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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Blizzard's new Dungeon System is a pretty huge overhaul of the social and gameplay experience of getting an instance group together, and we're all pretty excited about it here. On top of the hassle-free daily random dungeon selection and the great new matchmaking features, you even get teleported to the random dungeon.

But as it turns out, there's even more cool stuff hiding below the surface. If you're like me, chances are good you've spent a day or two chain-running heroics to gear up an alt or to get instant gratification on that badge item you want. The issue with chaining heroics at this point in time is that eventually you hit a wall: do instances you hate (Oculus) or stop running instances because of your 24-hour heroic lockouts.

Well, in patch 3.3, everything's a-changin'. While heroic lockouts aren't going away, they will not affect your random dungeon selections. What this means is that if you and four guildies do a timed Culling of Stratholme run, and then you join the queue for a random heroic, you may be assigned Culling of Stratholme a second -- or third, or fourth -- time, depending on your luck, as your random dungeon. And you'll get two extra Emblems of Triumph for completing the random dungeon each time, even if you've run the dungeon already that day. The only way that your lockout will affect you is that you cannot create a group with /invite for that same dungeon again that day.

Basically, as long as you're choosing the Random Dungeon option, you can run as many heroics as you want, every day.

With increased rewards for, easier access to, and the trivialization of lockouts for heroics, Patch 3.3 is the perfect time to dust off that neglected level 80 alt of yours and take him or her on a tour of Northrend's most dangerous places.

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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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The LFG system has been completely revamped. Details were released the other day. It's supposed to be coming some time in patch 3.3. You won't have to worry about not finding a tank or a healer as the LFG interface is supposed to draw from a pool of various servers. The idea of pulling players from other servers seems like a double edged sword. Sure you might be able to run into more people and more opportunities, but what happens if you run across a ninja or an unsavory player? I suppose it's reassuring to know that they're on a different server than you are.

But here's some other changes:

• Players can join as individuals, as a full group, or a partial group to look for additional party members.
• Groups using this tool will be able to teleport directly to the selected instance. Upon leaving the instance, players will be returned to their original location. If any party member needs to temporarily leave the instance for reagents or repairs, they will have the option to teleport back to the instance.

Personally I like the idea of not having to fly all the way down to the Utgarde or Nexus instances. That's going to cut down on travel time for sure. Hopefully the players we'll be partying with will already be fully repaired and have enough reagents to last the run. It's nice to know that extra convenience has been added for the days where we forget. Are you looking forward to these new changes?

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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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If you choose that category to talk about the race change or patch 3.3, you are automatically awarded the points.

• Restokin on the the latest druid change and the new LFG/LFR system.
• Gray Matter takes a look at a new simulation tool gaining some attention, SimCraft.
• Diabolical Minds takes a look at the hybrid tax.
• Eviscerated has a nice list to level your enchanting from 1 to 450.

Finally, Azeroth United is interviewing Kristin Lindsay of Child's Play on November 2rd during a UStream broadcast. They're also raising money for Child's Play, and you can support them over on their site. A good cause for a good charity.

Enchanting is probably the number one most complained about thing in patch 3.3 (or at least was until last night's nerf bat got the undead and paladins in an uproar). But hopefully this is all going to cool down a bit with what Bornaak just posted a short while ago.

His full statement is after the break. But the key line from the release:

To maintain the importance of the profession itself, the disenchanting UI option will only be available for groups that have a character with the necessary level of Enchanting to disenchant the items that are obtained.

More after the break.