If you're a serious noncombat pet collector, by now you probably have the Shop Smart, Shop Pet...Smart achievement, which rewards a Reeking Pet Carrier containing a very cute little skunk called Stinker. That was reason enough for me to get to 50 pets, but the owner of WarcraftPets.com (and the namesake of the Dalaran NPC who sells pet supplies, Breanni) had been told at BlizzCon that there was something unusual planned for the wee skunk in a future patch.

I didn't realize it at the time because the savages in my guild are still blowing up Crashin' Thrashin' Racers in raids instead of pulling out their usual pets, but it looks like 3.0.8 was the patch in question. Letters from Birdfall actually got video of Stinker's new behavior: when anyone nearby pulls out a Bombay Cat or a Black Tabby, he falls in love and starts chasing them, only to return to his owner with a broken heart. I'm off to go try this ingame, and suffice it to say that my own version of Pepé Le Pew is going to be out even more than he already is.

This will be like beating on a dead horse or something since Blizzard keeps making posts about it, but Aratil put up a comprehensive FAQ about the new and mysterious Arena matchmaking system. This is probably the most enlightening post of all, and should clear up many questions players have about their ratings versus their performance. It explains why some teams are experiencing drops in personal and team ratings even when they sport winning records.

In a nutshell, the system is continuously trying to place players and teams in the bracket. This means a 50% win ratio, where teams are fighting other teams of equal skill (and thus have an even chance to win or lose). If players get winning records but still drop in ratings, it means that they are beating far inferior teams and the system will adjust their Matchmaking Ratings or MMR to the appropriate level. It is by far the best post about the subject, answering important concerns clearly and without any smoke and mirrors. The way Aratil explains it shows how the new system is superior to the old one. If you're going to read just one post about the new system (and there's a lot), this should be it.

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?

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. Adam Holisky will be your host today.

As Alex mentioned yesterday, he and I will be taking turns with the queue. So don't fret, Alex will be back in your loving graces tomorrow. As this is my first post for the queue, I feel like I'm boldly going where no man (Alex is a superman) has gone before. And who better to welcome me than John de Lancie's iconic Q character? With Picard oddly facepalming himself... huh. I hope this isn't a sign of things to come. Anyways, I digress. On with the Q!

037 asked...

"Is it possible to solo Zul'Durub to farm the mounts? If it makes a difference, I am a 10 Man Naxx geared Enhancement Shaman."

Dear Blizzard: Undo the Beastmastery nerfs or the cow gets it. Signed, Scattered Shots.

So as you heard the other day, the dev team admits it. They were a little too overly enthusiastic in their nerfs. Beast Mastery is too low, and will be seeing some buffs "before Ulduar," probably related to Serpent's Swiftness or Kindred Spirits. Of course, Beastmastery Hunters could have told you a while ago that the nerfs were too much, and did. Ghostcrawler not only told us that we had the wrong numbers, but that it hardly mattered because everything would change with Ulduar anyway. So to see him change to this degree is a little disorienting, I must admit.

But anyway, this column is not meant to rake Ghostcrawler across the coals. I think he's a pretty decent guy all around. Besides, it's not the first time he's put his foot in his mouth, and it probably won't be the last, either. Overall, I'm glad he's at least communicating, and that he, as the "face" of the dev team, is at least willing to come out and communicate and admit when they were wrong. What I'm really interested in is exactly where the class is going.

Ok, so I didn't call it right. Adam did over chat, though, saying that changes needed to be made client side which indicated a patch. Of course, since I'd written everything up and because I'm lazy and didn't offer to eat my hat, I went ahead and said it's not a patch day. As it turns out, it was a patch day, although most definitely not one of those newfangled patches with bells and whistles and cool new features. It was a patch that resembled an honest-to-goodness patch, the kind that you sew on to holes in your pants. The kind of patch that's intended to cover up something embarrassing.

Because Patch 3.0.8 had a few holes that needed some patching, we got a nice little build to fix it yesterday. Like the Warlock's Ritual of Summoning. It really is fixed. How do like that flasher demon thing? Of course, they also nerfed Arcane Mages a little (more like a love tap, really). Is there anything you found in yesterday's, ah, patch that you found interesting? Since it wasn't a big patch, it didn't come with extensive patch notes. In fact, most of the stuff in there you'll probably have to discover yourself. Kind of like a mini-game. So how are you in this post Patch 3.0.8.9506 world?

One of the many changes that came along with Patch 3.0.8 was a new and nebulous Arena matchmaking and rating system that nobody was aware of except, perhaps, the guys over at Blizzard. When the new system debuted, it was met with mixed reactions and Blizzard was forced to suspend Arena play for a few days while they straightened out the kinks. The system was back a few days later, with ratings rolled back to pre-maintenance numbers and Achievements reset. Some players report being able to keep the items bought during that period, despite Blizzard stating that these would be removed and Arena points refunded.

Blizzard poster Aratil dropped by the PvP forums earlier to explain -- in layman's terms -- the new Arena system. The new system is supposed to match players according to skill, rather than gear. Exactly how the system determines skill wasn't made clear, although Kalgan explained that the system uses a Gaussian Density Filter. New to the system is a 'hidden rating' that's different from either the personal or team rating, and is unique to the player regardless of how many Arena teams he or she plays with.

What's clear from Aratil's post is that the change was intended to "promote the enjoyment of Arenas". Under the new system, highly skilled players will be matched up against other teams that provide a challenge while newer players just starting Arenas won't feel shut out. In a way, this can be likened to the low barrier of entry for raiding in Wrath of the Lich King. They're still tweaking the system, specially as far as ratings losses and gains are concerned, but the overall goal is to make Arenas more fun. I think we can all agree that more fun is always good. As long as it's working as intended, that is.

10. Blizz has given up on gold-ads and just made the Launcher scan my hard drive for credit card information, charge me $10, then I receive 5000 gold in an in-game email.

9. The Frogger gauntlet in Naxx has been moved to west-door of Ogrimmar. Alliance raids going for Thrall shall be forced to go through the front door.

8. The daily quest to steal 12 puppies for the walruses has been modified. We now have to hand out 12 packages of contraception to the Wolvar.

7. The hunter Beastmastery tree has a new talent, "Shutdah3llup", which adjusts all damage-meter addons so that the BM hunter's numbers are always 150DPS higher than anybody else's.

6. Warlocks get a new spell, "Invite2RaidPlz" which allows any warlock to transform into an Arcane-spec'd mage for five minutes

The article's image expresses how I, and I'm sure many others, feel about this.

Ghostcrawler posted last night that Ritual of Summoning would be fixed today. Nethaera posted small, but important, patch notes saying that it had been fixed. "Ritual of Summoning no longer has a 2 minute cooldown and will now function as intended."

However people are reporting that it still isn't working correctly.

Ghostcrawler now comes out and says that it'll be fixed sometime later today. "We are still on target to get this fixed today (Tue, Jan 27). I did not mean to imply that it would be fixed when the servers came back up."

Left hand, let me introduce you to right hand. Right hand says things like "We'll fix this today." Left hand says things like "These are the patch notes for this patch, which is now live." Right hand should tell left hand that not everything is live just yet, and update the patch notes accordingly.

Now that I got my tenses all screwed up, we'll update when Ritual of Summoning actually is fixed.

Update: It is now fixed, for real this time.

Big Download has mirrored today's patch for us all. You can head over there and grab both the Mac and PC versions. While the download is small, just under seven megs, the Blizzard downloader has been known to lag out and not work correctly at times. And these times usually occur right on patch day, so we've got you covered.

This patch fixes some bug that have been around since 3.0.8 went live last Tuesday. We know at least three confirmed bugs it fixes, but we're not sure about the rest. This patch is being called 3.0.8.9506 or 3.0.8a.

Happy patch day!

As usual, please do not leave comments with external download links as we cannot verify their integrity. We have this rule for your safety!

It appears that hell has frozen over and the realms are coming back up early today. Now I have a wooden desk, so I'm just going to go ahead and knock on it very loudly.

/knock /knock /knock

Okay, now that that's out of the way and my cat ran into the other room scared...

There is a small patch you'll need to download. We're working on getting mirrors up for it right now. In addition, we're not really sure of everything that was patched. There were some brief comments by Ghostcrawler last night outlining a few things (Hunter aspects, Ritual of Summoning, and Howling Blast), but that's it.

Update: The cat has returned. All is well.

There is a small patch deployed today, fixing at least the three bugs we reported on last night.

The patch is a client side patch. This means you'll need to download a new, albeit small, patch when you first log onto WoW today. For me, the patch downloaded and installed automatically when I executed the World of Warcraft Launcher on my desktop (pictured above).

This patch brings the game from version 3.0.8.9464 to 3.0.8.9506. Updated: The patch is 6.923mb in size on a Windows computers (interestingly the program you have to download to get the patch is an additional 2.1mb). The realms should be up by 11:00 a.m. PST / 2:00 p.m. EST today.

We'll bring you more as we learn it.

So with all the hubbub about 3.0.8's problems, a lot of people are wondering who to blame. Activision seems to be a popular target, with people blaming them for nerfing Blizzard's famed "it's-ready-when-it's-ready" game design cycle and rushing things out the door while they're still buggy and imbalanced.

Popular MMORPG blogger Tobold is in that camp himself. In one of his latest blog posts, he theorizes that Blizzard has been cutting spending for some time now, be it because of falling stock prices or the need to move WoW team members to Diablo 3 or Starcraft 2 or simply because of the economic downturn in general.

Today is not patch day. That's actually the good news. Despite the bug fixes that Ghostcrawler promised should come up after regular weekly maintenance, there doesn't seem to be signs of a patch. Adam contends there's possibly a patch because some fixing needs to be done client side. At any rate, there will be no hat eating today, and even if there is a tiny patch, it's still not a patch patch.

Right now we're still reeling from the aftermath of the disastrous Patch 3.0.8 which received some mixed reactions. Even Hunters, who were supposed to get a nerf, simply re-specced to Survival and went along their merry DPS meter-topping ways. Warlocks were supposed to get a buff, but instead got a bug in the form of a 2-minute cooldown to Ritual of Summoning. Let's not even talk about PvP where Wintergrasp crashed everything and Arenas were disabled because, well, the new undocumented ratings system just plain sucked.

So if there's anything to be thankful for today, it's that it's not a patch day. Not an official one, at any rate. When the servers come up later today, what do expect to find? No more lag? Fixed items? Fixed spells? Or, are you willing to wager -- eating your hat, maybe -- that today's "fix" will only bring more bugs?

Update: Alex here! Silly Zach, today is a patch day! It's a minor patch, bringing us up to v3.0.8.9506. The same questions here all apply, though. What fixes are you hoping to see today? Will game experience improve after today's maintenance?

Tomorrow we'll be seeing maintenance for all realms between 3:00 a.m. PST / 6:00 a.m. EST and 11:00 a.m. PST. / 2:00 p.m. EST. Ideally these things don't go over, but as you know, they often do. Look to posts throughout the morning on WoW Insider for updates.

We know that there'll be a few bug fixes, which we posted about earlier. There is still no word if this will be a server side only fix or if there'll be a client side patch, presumably patch 3.0.9. Again, we'll get the news up on the site as soon as we find out.