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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I'm on a boat!

That was the first thing that came to mind as I entered Icecrown for today's Gunship encounter that will be coming in patch 3.3. It was another fun fight against those foul Horde forces although there were a few slight bugs in the mix. Unfortunately, we weren't able to complete it because the Alliance cannons just didn't seemed to be working properly. The goblins must have sabotaged it. Either that or someone forgot to reload them.

I added some screenshots of the event into the Icecrown gallery.

Anyway, it's time to grab your sword and fight the Horde!

Every week, Shifting Perspectives examines issues affecting druids and those who group with them. Today we root around our inbox and herd a series of scribbled notes across our desk, trying to get what we actually know about patch 3.3 in order. Also, Zach Yonzon's PhotoShop skills for the win, but we already knew that.

This week's column is going to be a little bit of a grab bag in much the same way that our patch 3.1 miscellany post was, because there have been a few changes on the PTR recently that we haven't yet discussed.

Before we get any farther, I'd also like to give a shout-out to our readers and commenters on last week's column, "The disappearance of the bear." I was a little antsy over how it was going to be received (lengthy articles on what's going wrong with a spec can get derailed into QQ-fests pretty easily, and that wasn't my intent), but was heartened to see so much quality discussion. One of the things I realized after reading through the comments was that Blizzard may actually have succeeded a little too well in their quest to make tanking more attractive and fun to the average player. WoW's four tanking classes (warrior, paladin, druid, and death knight) comprise 4 of the 5 most popular classes in the game right now. As I've written previously, the druid functions as the proverbial canary in the coal mine as a harbinger of class balance concerns, and with each of the game's plate classes numbering among the most played at 80, it's impossible for this not to have an impact on druid spec choice.

Anyway. For the moment, we are going to turn away from this rather depressing situation, and concern ourselves with what's going on in patch 3.3.

Daelo has posted this week's raid testing schedule for the patch 3.3 PTR, and we're going to get more looks at what the Icecrown raid has in store for us:

US Servers
Monday, October 26 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Festergut
Wednesday, October 28 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Icecrown Gunship Battle
Thursday, October 29 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT – Sindragosa
Friday, October 30 at 7PM EDT / 4 PM PDT - Valithria Dreamwalker

EU Servers
Tuesday, October 27 at 19:30 CEST – Lord Marrowgar
Wednesday, October 28 at 19:30 CEST – Lady Deathwhisper
Thursday, October 29 at 19:30 CEST – Professor Putricide
Friday, October 30 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface

A little bit of analysis about the schedule after the break.

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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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There's another new build on the PTR, which means we're one step closer to seeing the new patch 3.3 drop. And while of course Icecrown probably holds its place as the biggest feature of the new patch, there's a whole slew of other changes to look ahead to, from updated achievements and a new faction to run, a brand new LFG interface with cross-realm instances, the Kalu'ak fishing derby, speeded-up Northrend reputation grinds, and lots of other things. Man oh man this patch is building up to be quite the event.

So the question today is: what are you most looking forward to? Personally, I remain a fan of the 5-man instances -- I've already run two of them on the PTR, but fighting enemies co-op in a small group like that is really why I play the game. And of course cross-realm LFG will probably be a big part of the excitement for me as well. While I do expect there to be a few issues, hopefully it'll make jumping into a group as quick and easy as possible. And I'm looking forward to that fishing tournament, too -- the last one was a good idea, but hopefully a new implementation will help freshen things up.

What are you looking forward to in patch 3.3?

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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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Excited to jump in on the Icecrown Gunship battle today on the PTR? Too bad -- Daelo has posted on the forums that due to instance server issues, today's testing has been canceled. He posted that on the EU forums, so we're not sure if that means it's also canceled on the North American realms, but we'll presume so. If we hear otherwise (as this is the PTR, all testing and data is subject to change at a moment's notice), we'll let you know.

As for what this means for the testing cycle, probably nothing at all -- delays and changes are pretty standard for the test realm, and even as they said in the original announcement, bosses can go up and down whenever the devs want. I do think we will see the gunship battle tested on the PTR at some point, though -- it seems like one of the more complicated encounters in the instance, and Blizzard will surely want to put it under a microscope sometime before the patch goes live.

Update: Apparently the gunship battle is live right now (4:40pm Pacific) on the test realm. If you want to see what it's like, get yourself a raid and head on in.

I cleared out the tail end of my afternoon in the hopes of getting a glimpse at the latest raid boss to be tested in the patch 3.3 PTR. Festergut was open for testing on North American servers while the European servers had Rotface. There were some issues with Rotface earlier in the day (namely that the 25 man version of Rotface had health that was meant for the 10 man). Anyway, I managed to get in a few attempts on Festergut here while playing on my priest.

First, let's talk trash.

Blizzard has posted the schedule this week for testing of the new bosses in Icecrown Citadel on the patch 3.3 PTR. Here's what Slorkuz on the EU forums says is going down:

US PTRs
October 21 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Festergut
October 22 at 7PM EDT / 4PM PDT - Icecrown Gunship Battle

EU PTRs
October 21 at 19:30 CEST - Rotface (this test is already over, unfortunately)
October 22 at 19:30 CEST - Icecrown Gunship Battle

As always, these schedules and everything else on the PTR is subject to change at a moment's notice. You can find short descriptions of what we know about the bosses after the break.

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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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World of Raids has unveiled an extremely spoiler-filled video of the first quest to obtain the legendary axe, Shadowmourne. The quest, called The Sacred and the Corrupt, is active on the PTR but cannot be completed as it requires items obtained from Icecrown Citadel. The sweet-looking axe (shown above as data-mined by MMO Champion) is an upgrade from an identical but less spooky and icy-glowy epic axe called Shadow's Edge. The six minute video is pretty cool and epic, with the setting eerily reminiscent for players who played the Human campaign in Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne The Reign of Chaos (thanks, Skeeran! Shame on me!). Nothing much to say, really, other than hit the jump to see the video. Oh, and in case I haven't made it clear... it's kind of spoiler-ish.

Our podcast is now ready for your downloading pleasure, and I have to say -- it was a good one. Nothing flashy, no once-in-a-lifetime guests (though both Turpster and Matticus were on with me, and those guys are definitely one-of-a-kind), but it was just a good solid podcast, with some great discussion about the latest PTR build and Lord Marrowgar, the Battle.net changeover, and our very first predictions about when we might see patch 3.3 on the live servers. Turpster's even got some money riding on his guess already.

Plus we answer your emails as usual, and that's always a good time -- you can email us anything you want (including some mp3s for intros if that's your thing) at "theshow AT wow dawt com". If you like the show, don't forget to go hit us up on iTunes -- you can subscribe to the show there, or leave us a good rating or review if you like. Thanks for listening as always, and enjoy the show!

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A new PTR for patch 3.3 has just been pushed through on the testing servers. Most of the classes have seen some tweaks and changes. At first glance, the biggest winners (not whiners) appear to be mages and shadow priests. Some other big changes include the druid spell Rebirth dropping from a 20 minutes cool down to a 10 minute cool down.

Oh and raid leaders, it seems anyone in the party can use raid marks now. Joy!

Also, new Achievements have surfaced for Icecrown dungeons. Find out what other adjustments were made after the jump.

Update: New glyph changes and a new Feat of Strength has been added.
Update 2: Tier 10 relics have been added to the bottom.

After someone asks a question on the forums about the new Mage Tier 10 bonus and the numbers behind it, Ghostcrawler brings up a little interesting insight into the way Blizzard puts these abilities and attributes together. He says that there are two steps to implementing a new ability: mechanics first, and then numbers later. That may seem common sense (and to a certain extent, it definitely is), but it's interesting to note that it's always what the ability does first, and then numbers later. Blizzard is much less likely (relatively speaking of course, and there are plenty of exceptions to this rule) to put a new ability into the game than just tweak current numbers.

It makes sense, and if there's a new ability you've been waiting to see in the game, maybe the reason Blizzard hasn't tackled it yet is that they're working on tweaking numbers to try and fix it without starting up a new mechanic. Ghostcrawler also says that this is the PTR we're dealing with, and so of course those Tier 10 bonuses aren't set in stone yet, just like everything else being tested. They don't call it the PTR for nothing.

Yesterday, the PTR servers were loaded with the most recent build of the upcoming 3.3 content. This included Forge of Souls, a new 5 player dungeon which is meant to be the introductory instance into Icecrown Citadel. As we made our way into the frozen halls of the citadel to where the dungeons are housed, we came across three portals. To the left was the Forge of Souls itself which is the first one you'll be allowed into. To the right was the Pit of Saron that Matthew Rossi covered earlier this week. Lastly, between the two was the Halls of Reflection, which strange rumors surround while its doors remain firmly locked. After opening the portcullis to the Forge we made our way inside. More of the adventure after the break.

The PTR has been out for several days now. It's loaded with the latest build of the upcoming patch 3.3 which will feature the Icecrown raid and several smaller 5 man instances. The first instance that's up for testing is the Pit of Saron. I know some players do not like to be spoiled and would rather take in the moment when they first encounter it on their own. Others like myself crave information and wish to know every possible detail on a particular boss or instance. There's no right or wrong answer. PTRs are designed to be a testing ground and it offers a cool preview of what is to come. Some of the other bloggers on the staff along with myself jumped on during the weekend to give the place a shot. I had a fun time in there and learned a few interesting things. I don't think the instance is entirely finished yet, but there's enough in there to keep me busy healing.

Have you taken a look around the place yet? If not, do you intend to at some point?