In the good old days, expansions came around once in a blue moon. They were the stuff of legend which invited almost two years of hype and intrigue. You paid your dollars/pounds/euros/yuan, and you got your new classes, those shiny new zones and those ten extra levels. But, with patch 3.0.2 (aka Echoes of Doom) we got something new, we got transition. Yes, this was the patch where we got a sampling of Wrath designed to tease players waiting on tender hooks and also keep interest for that final week until the expansions hit properly.

Given Blizzard's shift in how they treat patches, now geared towards larger mini expansion style updates like patch 2.4 and patch 3.2, there's definitely something changing in the way we get new installments of the game. After all, there's as much hype about every mini expansion-like patch, from the new areas, class buffs/nerfs and weapons to the smaller changes involving the UI. Shiny expansion special editions aside, do you think it would ever be possible to have expansions become automatically downloaded massive patch updates over a standalone disc or download that you have to buy every two years? What do you think, readers?

Here at WoW Insider we don't always agree with each other. Whether it's debating the merits of various tanks on different encounters, the damage difference between pure and hybrid DPS classes, the ideal function of a particular healing class in raids, or the superiority of cake over pie, our back-channel discussion tends to be pretty interesting.

Eliah Hecht's article "25-man gear should not be better than 10-man gear" sparked a lot of great discussion with our readers and, I think, some illuminating poll results as well. The majority of responders believed that giving 10-man and 25-man raids the same loot table would result in a significant drop in popularity for 25-man raiding. Overall, I tend to agree with this, but I also think that Eliah touched on something that speaks to Blizzard's evolving sense of game design, much of which is evident in the transition between late Burning Crusade and Wrath.

I would like to call this the Sunwell effect, or "ingame rationality." To wit: don't incentivize players to behave in a manner contrary to your actual design interests. I believe this played a huge role in the differences between BC and Wrath raiding, and that it underlies why the 25-man loot table has to remain superior to its 10-man counterpart.

So the Patch 3.1 PTR has dropped and all the madness associated with it has started. I always find it interesting to watch how some ideas and changes morph from "AMG! Imma gonna stop paying MY $15 A MONTH right now and you're gonna be out of a job because Titan's Grip didn't need to be nerfed!" to "WoW! These new Warrior changes make the Titan's Grip nerf pointless! I am so uber again!" I /facepalm at that sort of thought progression, as I suspect many of you do as well.

Cielago asked:

"How how long do I have to get title and mount rewards for the achievements associated with Wrath raids and heroics? Is it until patch 3.1 when Ulduar gear will make them easier? Until the next expansion? Some time in between?"

We've had some rather...bumpy... patches as of late from Blizzard. In patch 3.0.2 the servers were down for what was nearly a day before hand, and when the patch finally did arrive not everything was as it should have been. It took a month's time for all the changes to make their way to the live server.

When Wrath of the Lich King was launched, there were countless servers inflicted with near game-ending lag and connection problems for people. And that's not to mention the hour long queues many of us faced (and still face to some degree).

Patch 3.0.8 brought with it a whole new host of issues, leading Mike Schramm to proclaim The Disaster of Three-Oh-Eight. There are still lingering issues from that. Just ask any Hunter about the cower bug.

So while we sit here with bated breath waiting for new information about patch 3.1, there is a little voice going on in the back of my head. "Do you really want this, Adam? Do you really want your email box to be flooded with tips about how buggy the patch is?"

But then I think of happier things, like clam stacking, and I smile.

I want to take a poll today. Do you think patch 3.1 will be a clamity or a cheering celebration?

There's a lot of speculation that 3.0.8 will drop tomorrow. We've got our sources that say it looks good for a release tomorrow, there have been some blue posts about it, and MMO-Champion is contending it's as good as confirmed (90% chance Boubouille says).

However with the impending patch there is a very important reminder to be made: not everything we see in patch notes is correct. It's bold because it's important.

Take a trip back to the 3.0.2 patch notes.

On the 3.0.2 PTR we saw a plethora of changes to all the classes and items, tons and tons and tons. More than we had ever seen. However when the official patch notes were released, things were amiss. Many of the changes we saw on the PTR did not make it into the live patch.

I was doing a bit of research tonight for upcoming articles about patch 3.0.8, and I came across some more changes to clams. Yes you read that right, clams. The little things you get after killing every damn murloc and sea creature.

This topic deserves an article for a few reasons. First, let's take a look at all the changes to clams since 3.0.2:

• Clams are now stackable in stacks of 20. (Patch 3.0.2)
• Players can now open clams while riding a vehicle, sitting, mounted, stealthed, and invisible. (Patch 3.0.8)
  

I look at this and think to myself "Some at Blizzard spent time thinking about different conditions that clams needed to be opened up in, wrote out a list, discussed it with someone, and then implemented the changes."

And further, someone said "Clams take up too much bag space, let's let them be stacked together."

Robin Torres writes WoW, Casually for the player with limited playtime.

2007 truly was the year of the casual, but 2008 continued the trend of Blizzard developers to make more content accessible for those of us with limited playtime. The biggest patches for us (and everyone else) were 2.4 and 3.0.2. And there was that little expansion that happened. Overall, there is more for us to do in less time. Here is my list of the top 5 WoW improvements for us this past year.

Right now, as I type this I'm imagining Conan O'Brien's old "In the Year 2000" bit, which they kept doing way past 2000. This really has nothing to do with the shaman class, except that it's funny to imagine an orc in Earthshatter holding a searing totem to his face and doing it. Hey, it's New Years, I was up late, you're going to have to accept that my already tenuous grip on reality is a trifle frayed today.

2008 was an interesting year for shamans. When we covered 2007 for shamans, the general consensus for the class was that it needed some work. Now, a day into 2009, did it get the work it needed? Wrath of the Lich King has really only been out for over a month, but it (and the patch preceding it) more or less dominated the year for every class, shamans included. However, the year started off with another big content patch which more or less dominated everything up until the release of Wrath, namely Fury of the Sunwell. It's fair to say that most shamans didn't get to raid Sunwell (although they were in demand for Sunwell raiding guilds, which we'll discuss) but almost any shaman who was level 70 could do the various Sunwell dailies, get to exalted and pick up a nice necklace or three as well as various other pieces for your offsets.

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. In this special edition, we cover the top 10 changes of 2008.

We've been through a lot in 2008. I hit 70 on my current Rogue last January, and so I have paid keen attention to the patch notes and blue posts right alongside many of you. I was excited to reach the level cap on my blood elf; Rogues were at the height of their power. Season 3 and Season 4 of the arena season saw us demolishing every non-healing class in representation. None even dared to consider rivaling a Rogue with a pair of Glaives in any DPS contest.

However, due to Blizzard's hesitance to drastically change any balance issues before WotLK's release, we essentially had one PvE spec (20/41/0 Combat) and one PvP spec (20/0/41 Shadowstep). While there were always Rogues experimenting on the fringe with new specs, 90% of Rogues fell into one of these two buckets.

Both were brute force builds, designed to smash things with very slow maces or swords; and not even very creatively with that. We excelled in the arena due to our mobility and infinite energy pool, we ruled in PvE due to the overbudgeted weapons and leather in the Tier 6 dungeons. There was no finesse, no grace, no elegance outside of flashy moves (like vanishing a Death Coil). We were around to spam Sinister Strike until the boss died and spam Hemorrhage until the Druid finally ran out of mana.

WotLK has fixed all that. Read on as we cover the top 10 changes that helped us move from mindless button smashers into the deadly swans we have become.

Every Tuesday, Shifting Perspectives explores issues affecting Druids and those who group with them. This week, our author is completely spaced out on cold medication, and is somewhat concerned that her raid performance has improved under the circumstances.

The time has come (the Allie said)
To talk of many things.
Of Roots and Bash and Travel Form,
And Strength (which scales with Kings).
Why Tauren cat form sucks so hard,
And whether trees have wings!

And, yes, before anyone asks, I'm tripping on too much cough syrup and ibuprofen after receiving a belated viral Christmas gift from a relative. So I'll just put this out there right now; this column's probably on the weird side. I took a long look at all three Druid specs over 2008 and saw a few sad things, a few happy things, a little song, a little dance, a little seltzer down your pants, and now I'm channeling the famous Mary Tyler Moore episode "Chuckles Bites the Dust," and that has to stop because I do not believe Mary Tyler Moore ever played a Druid.

If you're completely uninterested in reading an account of any spec that's not your own -- although that would make me weep into my little cup of generic label cough syrup -- here's a set of quick links to each:

• Balance
• Feral
• Resto

Each year, Arcane Brilliance cooks up 52 columns about Mages, each one roasted at precisely the right temperature for precisely the right amount of time (usually a couple hours on Saturday morning over a soggy bowl of Cinnamon Toast Crunch, to be honest). As we arrive at the 52nd week of 2008, Arcane Brilliance would like to thank each and every one of the Mages who come here every weekend to celebrate our wonderful class by reading a giant, well-cooked wall of text. Arcane Brilliance would also like to say to the Warlocks who come here to mock us and drink our delicious tears, "We hope your felhound eats you."

Wow, so 2008, huh?

A lot of things happened this year, right? Crazy.

We here at Arcane Brilliance thought that since next week's column will be posted in 2009, we should take a moment this week to remember the year that was, and what it meant to all of us who walk the path of magic. There were some pretty high highs, and some exceptionally low lows, so we figured it would be fun to throw the highs into a ring with the lows and let them fight to the death. Join us after the break to see who wins!

Welcome to Wrath of the Lich King, my fellow Druids -- and welcome, I hope, to another expansion full of great things for the class. In general I believe the future is very bright for each spec, and with dual specs coming to the game, it's going to be a lot easier to enjoy the Druid's versatility without having to finance your class trainer's boat payments.

THE DRUID CLASS IN WRATH

• Balance: We took a thorough look at the balance spec's current state and likely future here. Our laserchicken contingent probably received the most substantive overhaul of all three specs heading into the expansion, and most of the news is very good indeed.
  

• Feral: Our assessment of the feral is here and includes a look at Blizzard's effort to split the tree into bear-centric and cat-centric talents. Bears on the outside seemed hardest hit with an average loss of 10K+ armor post-patch 3.0.2, but don't let it depress you; bear tanking is better than it's ever been. Cat DPS is poised to gain a massive boost at level 75 with Savage Roar, but until then it's same ol', same ol'.
  

• Restoration: Resto, covered here, has probably taken the biggest blow in terms of both PvE and PvP viability in the form of a Lifebloom nerf and the disappearance of now-classic PvP specs, but we still got a lot of big buffs. Tree of Life has been vastly improved and we've gained both a flash heal (at 80) and an AoE HoT. Unfortunately, Wild Growth may be facing a nerf in the form of a cooldown soon, but nothing's certain yet. I don't want to sound too down here. You will notice the Lifebloom nerf in the post-3.0.2 world, but resto's gained a tremendous amount of raw healing output coupled with its customary mana efficiency. Stay tuned; healing is likely to undergo some major changes soon.

To play Wrath tonight you'll need to update the game. The game installs version 3.0.1 when you upgrade to Wrath, and you'll need to update it version to 3.0.3. That means installing the following two patches:

• Version 3.0.1 - > Version 3.0.2
• Version 3.0.2 -> Version 3.0.3

You are in luck though and don't have to wait around to download them all. We have the files hosted over at our sister site Big Download. Take a look after the break for a complete list of the files you'll need to get.

Note: If you saved the files from previous patches, you're all set. But be sure they work and are fully saved before you go out and get Wrath tonight – no need to waste time downloading stuff again.

We hunters love our animal companions, especially Beast Mastery hunters -- many of us view the synergy between beast and master as the biggest reason for choosing this class, and we identify as much with the animal as with the humanoid. Big Red Kitty, arguably the most famous hunter in the world, is a case in point: so much of who he is would be much less clear if he had chosen the name "Short Red Dwarf." The image of dwarf and cat (Hobbes) together is an essential part of his hunter persona.

So it's no surprise that so many hunters are willing to go to such great lengths to get the pet that looks just right. Many hunters are willing to spend hours just waiting and waiting in order to find that one special most beautiful pet, and why not? After all, the look of our character will change lots of times as we upgrade our gear, but our beautiful pet will stay more or less the same -- it's worthwhile to put a bit of extra effort into making it look nice.

But which pets look the best? Below, I present to you the award winners in the category of Most Beautiful Pets! Check out the gallery below for a look at each pet and a short description of where you can find it.

(But what's that you say? You don't care if your pet is pretty or not? You want something that will scare the pants off your enemy? Stay tuned -- winners in the Most Intimidating Pets category are coming up!)

If you play a hunter at all, you've probably noticed a change to pets' Defensive behavior since patch 3.0.2. Ever since the dawn of time, or at least since I started playing (my first character was a hunter), pets on Defensive mode will attack anything that attacks you, the hunter (barring bugs). In this new world, though, pets attack anything that attacks you and anything that you attack. The idea here was just to make things a little more convenient for the hunter; typically, if you're attacking something, you want your pet to attack it as well. And if not, you can use Passive.

It's a nice idea, but it's not been entirely popular. Part of the resistance comes from the fact that it's hard to switch off years of habit. Hunter's Mark, pet attack, I attack. That's how I've done it forever. And part of it is that players want more control; there's no longer any way to attack without your pet attacking if your pet is in defensive. It also really doesn't save much work; a single keystroke per fight, at most (many players have /petattack macroed to things like Hunter's Mark anyway).

Blizzard has noticed that many Hunters have not been happy about this change to Defensive, so they're taking a look at it. If you have any feedback on the new Defensive mode, such feedback is being collected in this thread on the official forums, so you might want to drop by and let them know what you think. Personally, I don't love it, but it might just be fear of change. Skimming through the comments I do seem to be in the minority; most hunters report being quite happy with it. What do you think?