The way you look for an available group in World of Warcraft now is clunky at best, and still relies on people having back-channel discussions outside of the LFG system in order to find other players to run dungeons with them. It essentially relies on people queuing up for dungeons and sitting there until someone speaks up.

Right now on the PTR Blizzard is testing a new system, one that allows you to drop yourself or your group into a Looking for Group/Dungeon/Raid system that will automatically match you up with other people to round out your party. The beauty of the new system is that it’s far more passive, and allows you to essentially make yourself available and the game will find someone to match up with you – you can even drop yourself in alone, choose your role, and the system will find a group for you if you’re by yourself and looking to PUG something.

On the up side, that means that it’ll be even easier for people to find PUGs and for casual players to dip their feet into deeper waters than their guilds may currently be swimming in, but on the down-side the lack of that back-channel discussion may lead to this tool forming groups that instantly fall apart as soon as someone deemed undesirable joins the group, or PUGs that fall apart quickly because of an undesirable deviate or a loot ninja.

Over at WoW.com they have an excellent discussion thread about this, and point out that some of the other enhancements to the system involve the limitation of certain classes to roll on certain items (for example, melee characters can’t roll on spellpower gear) and the ability to disenchant an item straight from the need/greed roll screen if everyone passes on it.

Add to this the fact that the new LFG tool will automatically teleport you to the instance you’re queued up for when your group is assembled and you have what looks to be an exciting addition to the game, and one that will make it even easier to find and assemble a PUG for just about anything. But is it necessarily a good idea? What do you think? Let us know in the comments!

Spoilers be damned, full speed ahead!

The screenshot above was taken by Livejournal user PredictiveMemo and posted both at the World of Warcraft LiveJournal Community and her blog, ALT:ernative in a post here.

It comes from the PTRs, currently running 3.3, and indicate that we’ll see good old Kalecgos return as part of the upcoming Qule’Delar questline. Looks like Kalec has some doubts as to whether we can handle it, and some are predicting that maybe now with Malygos’s demise at our hands in The Eye of Eternity, Kalec may rise to become the next aspect of the Blue Dragonflight. How he’ll do that without the Titan-blessed power that Malygos had is another quesiton, but it’s speculation at best.

Anyone else on the PTRs that have seen this or been through this questline? Shout it out in the comments!

So the word is out that in patch 3.3, Emblems of Triumph will be the new emblem to have, and that everything that drops Emblems of Conquest now will drop Emblems of Triumph instead. You can still trade down if you want to pick up items from previous tiers, but you won’t be able to get Emblems of Conquest going forward.

The goal here is clearly accessibility, and Blizzard is solidifying its stance that they would rather more people be able to get access to more of the endgame gear and content than they would stratify it and only allow the highest-tier players have access to the badges that get the best gear in the game. What do you think? Is this trend towards making the endgame content and high-tier gear accessible even for casual players the right direction and a boost towards making the game more enjoyable for all players, or is this just another example of Blizzard dumbing down the game and diluting the achievements of its most hardcore players and devotees?

Cadistra, artist and author of WoW, Eh? and all around awesome person, put together her interpretation of what a Tauren Paladin might look like once Cataclysm comes out and we have a whole slew of additional race/class combinations to choose from. One of the more interesting race/class combos we’ll get is the Tauren Paladin – which might immediately seem contradictory to the lore but apparently already has the framework laid in quests on the PTRs – one called An Injured Colleague.

The story is essentially that the Tauren see the druidic teachings of the Night Elves as only part of the picture – not that it’s bad in any way, but the Tauren revere the Earthmother, and the moon is only one of her two eyes (well established in the lore). The other eye of the Earthmother is the Sun, and the Tauren, being a people who strive for balance in all things, have at least a few who seek to walk the path of the Sun (and in turn, of the light) as opposed to the druidic path of the moon (as in, with the Night Elves and the druids of Moonglade and the Cenarion Circle).

In An Injured Colleague, we speak to a Tauren Warrior and a Tauren Druid who share their doubts about the path they’re both on – presumably two characters we may see become the first Tauren Paladin and the first Tauren Priest, and a blue post seemed to hint that the name of the new light-following Tauren would be “Sunwalkers.”

There is a similar Alliance quest that re-introduces the Highborne to the Night Elves, thus paving the way for Night Elf mages. The quest is called “A Cautious Return,” and there are screenshots of it on the PTR in the link to “An Injured Colleague” above.

In any event though, if Cadistra’s interpretation of what a Tauren Paladin will look like is near the mark, I’m looking forward to rolling one when Cataclysm is released. And even if it’s not near the mark, I still love it: Cadistra’s work is always impressive. Check out her DeviantArt account for a larger version of this image!

Along with the wealth of changes coming in patch 3.2, one of them stood out for me, since my main is a hunter and spirit beasts are near and dear to my heart. I first learned about Skoll, the new wolf spirit beast, from Mania’s Arcania, who posted a fantastic video of someone who actually tamed him and is running around on the PTR with him.

He’s a gorgeous blue worg, with lightning crackling around his body, and he gets all of the skills that other spirit beasts get, including spirit strike and prowl. I’m hoping that when he goes live he’ll still be a Wolf, meaning he’ll get ferocious howl and other wolf-specific traits (not to mention their DPS) in addition to spirit strike – that might be enough to make me switch back to beast mastery now and again.